Question

I have Users model in my app with something like

belongs_to :account, :polymorphic => true, :dependent => :destroy

And some special account types like Admin or Editor

class Admin < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_one :user, :as => :account, :dependent => :destroy
end

class Editor < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_one :user, :as => :account, :dependent => :destroy
end

Is there any clean method to change User type from Editor to Admin? If I do something like

admin = Admin.new
User.first.account = admin
user.save
admin.save

There is still an old entry for editor type in the database.

Answer 1

Using :dependent => :destroy will only delete the associated object when the object itself is destroyed. You aren’t destroying the user record, just changing one of its attributes, so this functionality is never triggered.

To destroy it yourself, do something like

user = User.first
user.account.destroy
user.account = Admin.create
user.save