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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-25T18:07:20+00:00

I have a Rails application, with two models: SalesTransactions and PurchaseOrders. In the PurchaseOrders

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I have a Rails application, with two models: SalesTransactions and PurchaseOrders.

In the PurchaseOrders model, new entries are registered using ‘purchase_order_number’ as the key field. I use the create method of the model to search if that ‘purchase_order_number’ has been previously registered, and if so, reuse that record and use its id in the SalesTransaction record. If that name wasn’t already registered, I go ahead and perform the create, and then use the new PurchaseOrder record id in the SalesTransaction (the foreign_id linking to the associated PO).

Note that I don’t have the existing PurchaseOrder record id until I’ve done a look-up in the create method (so this is not a question of ‘how do I update a record using ‘accepts_nested_attributes_for’?’, I can do that once I have the id).

In some situations, my application records a new SalesTransaction, and creates a new PurchaseOrder at the same time. It uses accepts_nested_attributes_for to create the PurchaseOrder record.

The problem appears to be that when using ‘accepts_nested_attributes_for’, create is not called and so my model does not have the opportunity to intercept the create, and look-up if the ‘purchase_order_number’ has already been registered and handle that case.

I’d appreciate suggestions as to how to intercept ‘accepts_nested_attributes_for’ creations to allow some pre-processing (i.e. look up if the PurchaseOrder record with that number already exists, and if so, use it).

Not all Sales have a PurchaseOrder, so the PurchaseOrder record is optional within a SalesTransaction.

(I’ve seen a kludge involving :reject_if, but that does not allow me to add the existing record id as the foreign_id within the parent record.)

Thanks.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    OK, I’ve left this question out there for a while, and offered a bounty, but I’ve not got the answer I’m looking for (though I certainly appreciate folk trying to help).

    I’m concluding that I wasn’t missing some trick and, at the time of writing, there isn’t a neat solution, only work-arounds.

    As such, I’m going to rewrite my App to avoid using accept_nested_attributes_for, and post the SalesTransaction and the PurchaseOrder records separately, so the create code can be applied in both cases.

    A shame, as accept_nested… is pretty cool otherwise, but it’s not complete enough in this case.

    I still love Rails 😉

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