Question

I have an app with categories ‘Active’, ‘Waitlist’, and ‘Terminated’. These are in the view as a select box.

When the user selects ‘Terminated’ I want to put the current date into a datetime attribute (in the same model).

What’s the best way to do this? I tried this, but it didn’t work, and I’m not sure it’s the right place to do it:

[in the controller]

def update
  @household = Household.find(params[:id])
  if @household.status.eql? 'Terminated'
      @household.terminated = Date.yesterday()
  end
  if @household.update_attributes(params[:household])
    ....
  end
end

Answer 1

Use after_update callback in your model:

class Household
...
after_update :update_terminated_date

def update_terminated_date
    return unless status == 'Terminated'
    self.terminated = Date.today() # maybe better Time.now?
    self.save!
end

EDIT:
Maybe better idea is to just get rid of status column and set terminated to date when it’s really terminated and to null when it’s not?