Question

I’m trying to create/update a location while saving a checkin in my Rails project, but am having trouble.

A Checkin belongs_to :location and, a Location has_many :checkins

I’m using accepts_nested_attributes_for :location, :allow_destroy => true in my checkin model, and am trying to create a location when creating a checkin like so:

POST "checkin[note]=this-is-great&checkin[user_id]=123&checkin[location_attributes][name]=popeyes&checkin[location_attributes][id]=314" to http://localhost:3000/checkins.json

However, everytime I run that, it throws an error saying

Couldn’t find Location with ID=314 for Checkin with ID=

I’m not sure what I’m doing right..? I’d like for it to create the Location with a specific ID if it doesn’t exist, and update that same location (according the location_id) if it does exist.

The location table has an id (primary key) and name (varchar)

The checkin table has an id (primary key, auto-increment) and note (varchar)

Anyone successfully work with accepts_nested_attributes_for?

Answer 1

This is what I did to solve the problem:

I changed the id of Locations from primary to primary+auto-increment, and stopped trying to set it manually. Instead of making it the same as the foursquare_id that I was trying to store, I decided to store the foursquare_id separately (in a different column).

My checkin model looks like this:

  belongs_to :location, :autosave => true
  accepts_nested_attributes_for :location, :allow_destroy => true

 def autosave_associated_records_for_location
    if Location.find_by_foursquareID(location.foursquareID)
      self.location = Location.find_by_foursquareID(location.foursquareID)
    else
      self.location.save!
      self.location = self.location
    end
  end