Question

In my app, I’m able to save the user_id on my development machine using sqlite. However, the user_id is not being saved on my Heroku site, which uses Postgresql:

class ReviewsController < ApplicationController

  before_filter :authenticate_user!, :find_product

  def new
    @review = Review.new    
  end

  def create
    @review = @product.reviews.build(params[:review]) 
    @review.user_id = current_user.id 
    if @review.save
      SiteUpdatesMailer.review_added(@review).deliver 
      redirect_to product_path(@product), :notice => 'Thanks for your review!'     
    else
      render :action => :new    
    end
  end

  private

  def find_product
    @product  = Product.find(params[:product_id])    
  end

end

The user must be signed in to add a review. Should I be saving the user_id a different way?

Answer 1

Here’s a wild guess: you have a string column in Review that has a limit and you’re exceeding that limit when you say @product.reviews.build(params[:review]). SQLite doesn’t pay attention to size limits on varchar columns, PostgreSQL does and complains if you try to insert a value that is larger than the column size.

And some advice for free: don’t develop on SQLite if you’re going to deploy to Heroku (or anywhere else that doesn’t use SQLite), all databases are different and no ORM will protect you from those differences.