Question

My application has Users and Dwellings. When a user creates a dwelling, the user becomes the owner of the dwelling through a rails association. Through my create method, the user_id is successfully assigned to the newly created dwelling in the owner_id column, however the dwelling_id is not propagated to the dwelling_id in the user‘s record. I’m not sure if it is the relationship or method incorrectly set up, but the problem seems to occur when an attempt is made to save the user, as the dwelling is successfully created. Below are my models and method implementations.

Dwelling Model

# dwelling.rb
class Dwelling < ActiveRecord::Base
  attr_accessible :street_address, :city, :state, :zip, :nickname

  belongs_to :owner, :class_name => "User", :foreign_key => "owner_id"
  has_many :roomies, :class_name => "User"

  validates :street_address, presence: true
  validates :city, presence: true
  validates :state, presence: true
  validates :zip, presence: true

end

—

User Model

# user.rb
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  attr_accessible :email, :first_name, :last_name, :password, :password_confirmation, :zip
  has_secure_password

  before_save { |user| user.email = email.downcase }
  before_save :create_remember_token

  belongs_to :dwelling
  has_many :properties, :class_name => "Dwelling", :foreign_key => "owner_id"
...

—

Dwellings Controller (create method)

# dwellings_controller.rb
def create
  @dwelling = current_user.properties.build(params[:dwelling])

  if @dwelling.save
    current_user.dwelling = @dwelling
    if current_user.save
      flash[:success] = "Woohoo! Your dwelling has been created. Welcome home!"
    else
    flash[:notice] = "You have successfully created a dwelling, but something prevented us from adding you as a roomie. Please email support so we can try to correct this for you."
    end
    redirect_to current_user
    else
    render 'new'
  end
end

—

As mentioned above, the dwelling is successfully created but the “…but something prevented us from adding you as a rookie…” flash is triggered from the else conditional.

Update 8/3/12 9:11PM EST

I updated the create action to use user.save! to force the transaction. The following error was output. Apparently the password is required somehow.

ActiveRecord::RecordInvalid in DwellingsController#create

Validation failed: Password can't be blank, Password is too short (minimum is 6 characters), Password confirmation can't be blank

Answer 1

This was an issue with saving the user. I updated my create action in the Dwellings controller to to force a save of the user using user.save! to break the application and get an explicit error. Rails complained of a missing password (and password length) and password_confirmation. I am enforcing a presence validation on both password and password_confirmation as well as a length validation on password in my User model. I updated these validations to be enforced only on create. This solved the issue. With the validations no longer being enforced on user.save, the dwelling_id was successfully added to the user record. The newly implemented code is below.

#dwellings_controller.rb
...
def create
  @dwelling = current_user.properties.build(params[:dwelling])

  if @dwelling.save
    current_user.dwelling = @dwelling
    if current_user.save
      flash[:success] = "Woohoo! Your dwelling has been created. Welcome home!"
    else
      flash[:notice] = "You have successfully created a dwelling, but something prevented us from adding you as a roomie. Please email support so we can try to correct this for you."
    end
    redirect_to current_user
    else
      render 'new'
    end
  end
...

—

#user.rb
...
  validates :password, presence: { :on => :create }, length: { minimum: 6, :on => :create }
  validates :password_confirmation, presence: { :on => :create }