Question

I’m in Rails 3.2.6

We have a nested form that was functioning up until recently (not entirely certain when the error started occurring). Now the queries are passing in nulls.

Example output:

Started POST "/articles" for 127.0.0.1 at 2012-07-12 11:04:16 -0600
Processing by ArticlesController#create as HTML
  Parameters: {"utf8"=>"✓", "authenticity_token"=>"thing=", "article"=>{"asset_attributes"=>{"name"=>"asdf", "short_desc"=>"asdfasdfsadg", "publish_date"=>"2012-07-12 11:4", "content_section_attributes"=>{"section_id"=>"1", "primary_section"=>"1"}, "section_ids"=>[""], "author_id"=>"", "display_authorbiography"=>"1", "last_modified_by"=>"1", "by_line"=>"", "content_image_attributes"=>{"image_id"=>""}, "keywords_string"=>"", "public_keywords_string"=>"", "meta_public_keywords"=>"", "meta_page_title"=>"", "meta_description"=>"", "meta_url_name"=>"", "guid"=>"", "canonical"=>"", "partner_id"=>"", "tagline"=>"", "series_id"=>"", "display_adsense"=>"1", "sweepstakes"=>""}, "content"=>"<p>asdfasgasg</p>"}, "img_size"=>"i01", "show_cap"=>"1", "img_pos"=>"left", "commit"=>"Create"}
  User Load (0.2ms)  SELECT `people`.* FROM `people` WHERE `people`.`type` IN ('User') AND `people`.`id` = 1 LIMIT 1 /*application:TmnCoreCms,controller:articles,action:create*/
  Section Load (0.1ms)  SELECT `sections`.* FROM `sections` /*application:TmnCoreCms,controller:articles,action:create*/
  Site Load (0.1ms)  SELECT `sites`.* FROM `sites` WHERE `sites`.`id` IN (1) /*application:TmnCoreCms,controller:articles,action:create*/
  Site Load (0.1ms)  SELECT `sites`.* FROM `sites` /*application:TmnCoreCms,controller:articles,action:create*/
  Section Load (0.1ms)  SELECT `sections`.* FROM `sections` WHERE `sections`.`site_id` IN (1) /*application:TmnCoreCms,controller:articles,action:create*/
  Role Load (0.1ms)  SELECT `roles`.* FROM `roles` INNER JOIN `user_roles` ON `roles`.`id` = `user_roles`.`role_id` WHERE `user_roles`.`user_id` = 1 /*application:TmnCoreCms,controller:articles,action:create*/
   (0.1ms)  BEGIN /*application:TmnCoreCms,controller:articles,action:create*/
   (0.1ms)  COMMIT /*application:TmnCoreCms,controller:articles,action:create*/
   (0.1ms)  BEGIN /*application:TmnCoreCms,controller:articles,action:create*/
   (0.1ms)  COMMIT /*application:TmnCoreCms,controller:articles,action:create*/
   (0.1ms)  BEGIN /*application:TmnCoreCms,controller:articles,action:create*/
  SQL (0.2ms)  INSERT INTO `articles` (`content`, `created_at`, `static_url`, `updated_at`) VALUES ('<p>asdfasgasg</p>', '2012-07-12 17:04:16', NULL, '2012-07-12 17:04:16') /*application:TmnCoreCms,controller:articles,action:create*/
  Article Load (0.3ms)  SELECT `articles`.* FROM `articles` WHERE `articles`.`id` = 25 LIMIT 1 /*application:TmnCoreCms,controller:articles,action:create*/
{}
  SQL (0.0ms)  INSERT INTO `assets` (`aasm_state`, `author_id`, `by_line`, `canonical`, `content_id`, `content_type`, `created_at`, `creator_id`, `display_adsense`, `display_authorbiography`, `guid`, `last_modified_by`, `legacyid`, `live_date`, `meta_description`, `meta_page_title`, `meta_public_keywords`, `meta_url_name`, `migration_guid`, `name`, `partner_id`, `publish_date`, `publish_version`, `series_id`, `short_desc`, `sweepstakes`, `tagline`, `updated_at`, `url_name`) VALUES ('new', NULL, NULL, NULL, 25, 'Article', '2012-07-12 17:04:16', NULL, 1, 1, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, '2012-07-12 17:04:16', NULL) /*application:TmnCoreCms,controller:articles,action:create*/
  SQL (0.2ms)  INSERT INTO `content_sections` (`content_id`, `content_type`, `created_at`, `primary_section`, `section_id`, `updated_at`) VALUES (53, 'Asset', '2012-07-12 17:04:16', 1, NULL, '2012-07-12 17:04:16') /*application:TmnCoreCms,controller:articles,action:create*/
   (33.6ms)  COMMIT /*application:TmnCoreCms,controller:articles,action:create*/
Redirected to http://localhost:3000/articles/53-
Completed 302 Found in 63ms (ActiveRecord: 35.3ms)

So as you can see the attributes are being sent. Our controller looks like this.

def new
    @article = Article.new
    @asset = @article.build_asset
  end

  def create
    @article = Article.new(params[:article])
    if @article.save
      flash[:notice] = 'Article was successfully created.'
      redirect_to @article
    else
      render :action => "new"
    end
  end

Relevant Model information:

class ContentType < ActiveRecord::Base
  self.abstract_class = true
  validates_presence_of :asset, :message => "Must have an asset"
  has_one :asset, :as => :content, :dependent => :destroy
  delegate :name, :url_name, :author, :creator, :publish_date, :short_desc,
           :aasm_state, :live_date, :keywords,
           :to => :asset, :allow_nil => true
  delegate :keywords_string, :public_keywords_string,
           :to => :asset,
           :allow_nil => true

  def initialize(*args)
    super(*args)
  end


  def to_param
    "#{asset.id}-#{url_name}"
  end
end

class Asset < ActiveRecord::Base
  include AASM
  include Keywordable
  attr_accessible :author_id,
                  :by_line,
                  :canonical,
                  :content_image_attributes,
                  :content_section_attributes,
                  :creator_id,
                  :display_adsense,
                  :display_authorbiography,
                  :guid,
                  :keywords,
                  :keywords_string,
                  :last_modified_by,
                  :meta_description,
                  :meta_page_title,
                  :meta_public_keywords,
                  :meta_url_name,
                  :name,
                  :partner_id,
                  :public_keywords_string,
                  :publish_date,
                  :related_content_attributes,
                  :section_ids,
                  :series_id,
                  :short_desc,
                  :sweepstakes,
                  :syndication_partner_ids,
                  :tagline,
                  :url_name

  belongs_to :author,  :class_name => 'Person'
  belongs_to :content, :polymorphic => true
  has_many :content_sections, :as => :content,  :conditions => {:primary_section => nil},  :dependent => :destroy

class Article < ContentType
  attr_accessible :images_attributes,
                  :content_images_attributes,
                  :content_text,
                  :content,
                  :asset_attributes,
                  :content_attributes

I really dislike this association set up but it is what it is. What’s happening is that the nested form

<%= f.fields_for :asset do |asset| %>
    <fieldset class="span8">
        <legend>Asset Description</legend>
        <div id='a_title'>
            <%= asset.label :name, "Title <span class='req'>*</span>".html_safe %>
            <%= asset.text_field :name, :class => 'asset_textarea counter', "data-max" => 255 %>
            <br/><span></span>
        </div>
        <div id='a_desc'>
            <%= asset.label :short_desc, "Teaser<span class='req'>*</span>".html_safe %>
                    <%= asset.text_area :short_desc, :class => "span7 asset_textarea counter", "data-max" => 255, :rows => 7 %>
                    <br/><span></span>
        </div>
    </fieldset>
<% end %>

Is somehow passing the fields and Rails is putting nulls in. I have no attr_accessible warnings. If I do an update on the article it will save the asset data. So something is going wrong on the initialization I think but I’m not sure what.

TLDR
Rails is not passing values into sql query despite attr_accessible having the nested attributes.

Edit

The contentTypesController has some before filters that I originally thought were the issue (they still may be I’m still figuring out how they are being used)

class ContentTypesController < ApplicationController

  before_filter :clean_syndication_partners, :only => [:update]
  before_filter :setup_existing_content_instance_variable, :except => [:index, :new, :create, :sort, :update_json, :vid_search, :search_library]
  #before_filter :setup_new_content_instance_variable, :only => [:new, :create]
  before_filter :get_sections
  before_filter :get_sites
  def clean_syndication_partners
    @asset = Asset.find(params[:id], :include => :content)
    @asset.syndication_partners = []
  end

  def get_sites
    @sites_all = Site.all(:include => :sections)
  end
  def get_sections
    @sections = Section.all(:include => :site)
  end

  def setup_existing_content_instance_variable
    @asset = Asset.find(params[:id], :include => :content) if @asset.nil?
    instance_variable_set("@#{@asset.content.class.name.underscore}", @asset.content)
  end

  # def setup_new_content_instance_variable
  #   pub_keyword = false
  #   current_class = self.controller_name.singularize
  #   @content_type = current_class.downcase
  #   if params[current_class]
  #     cur_content= current_class.camelize.constantize.new(params[current_class])
  #     #cur_content.asset = Asset.update_attributes(params[current_class][:asset_attributes])
  #   else
  #     cur_content= current_class.camelize.constantize.new
  #     #cur_content.asset=Asset.new
  #   end
  #   #cur_content.asset.creator=current_user
  #   #instance_variable_set(:@asset, cur_content.asset)
  #   instance_variable_set("@#{current_class}", cur_content)
  # end

end

Answer 1

The issue ended up being an update to rails from 3.2.5 to 3.2.6. I think it’s due to our use of class inheritance for the sole purpose of sharing the asset relationship. We rolled it back and we’ll re-examine the relationship at a future time.