Question

Okey i just dont understand what can be wrong here

i have this app where users are approved by and admin and this was working fine until a few days ago

in my view i have a link that calls my user controller

<%= link_to 'Approve', active_user_path(user), :method => :put %>

here is my custum route for that link

match "users/:id/activate" => "users#activate", :as => "active_user"

now in my user controller i have this activate method

def activate
  @user = User.find(params[:id])

  puts @user.name #the correct name is displayed
  puts @user.is_approved.inspect.to_i #:is_approved is 0

  if @user.update_attribute(:is_approved, 1) 

  puts @user.is_approved.inspect # :is_approved is 1

  @user.activate_user

  puts @user.is_approved.inspect # :is_approved is 1

  @user.save!

  redirect_to "/users?is_approved=0"

  else
   render "/" # dosn't matter
  end 
end

I try to save 3 times here (update, activate_user, save!) but still the value will not be saved, the users is_approved field is still 0, how is that possible ?

here is my model method

def activate_user
  self.is_approved = 1
  self.save
end

btw i can update strings with this method but not integers (true and false dosnt work either)

in my model i have is_approved as both attr_accessible and attr_accessor

The solution

Well this is awkward but so it happens that in my user model i had attr_accessor :approved this resulted in that the model never went to the database to update the :approved column BUT instead it updated the local variable :approved so next time when i looked at the column then of course the :approved value had not changed

tldr?
if you have attr_accessor in your model with the same name as the column your trying to update => remove it

Answer 1

Never use attr_accessor on an attribute which is backed by a database column – the accessor generated by attr_accessor will mask the value stored in the database