Question

I have an object that is apparently randomly getting set to an id of 1 and the source of where this is happening is unknown in the codebase. Could be on an update attributes for a user for which school is associated.

How can I raise an error or otherwise log when this happens so I can track it down and resolve it?

Below is a first attempt but doesn’t seem to take into account update_attributes

belongs_to :foo_school, :foreign_key => 'school_id'

def foo_school=(foo_school)
  begin
    raise "Found" if foo_school == FooSchool.find(1)
  rescue Exception => e
    # Track it down through the stack trace
    Rails.logger.error e
  ensure
    write_attribute(:foo_school, foo_school)
  end
end

Answer 1

An observer can do this for you. What you do with this observer is up to you.

$ rails g observer Oddity

Add this in config/application.rb (search for “observer” in that file, there’s an example by default).
config.active_record.observers = :oddity_observer

class OddityObserver < ActiveRecord::Observer
  observe :foo

  def after_update(record)
    raise "Boom" if record.id == 1
  end 
end