Question

If I assign booleans in my callbacks, does it affect transactions? I suspect the assignment of false also return self.assigned in case below and thus breaks my transaction. Is this the case?

before_create :set_default_values

def set_default_values
  self.finished = false
  self.assigned = false
end

Answer 1

Yes, this does affect the transactions. Here’s the description from the official Rails doc:

If a before_* callback returns false, all the later callbacks and the
associated action are cancelled. If an after_* callback returns false,
all the later callbacks are cancelled. Callbacks are generally run in
the order they are defined, with the exception of callbacks defined as
methods on the model, which are called last.

I would just set these to :default => false in your migration file for setting up this table or columns. This definitely be easier.

Here’s the callbacks doc:
http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveRecord/Callbacks.html