Question

So, I’ve got this action in order to save a model:

def create
    logger.debug(params[:user_id])
    group_id = params['approver']['group_id']
    @approver = Approver.new(params[:approver])
    @approver.user_id = params[:user_id]

    respond_to do |format|
      if @approver.save
        logger.warn("Approver saved!")
        flash[:notice] = "New approver has been added!"
        format.html { redirect_to(group_path(group_id)) }
      else
        flash[:notice] = "Sorry .. had issues adding the approvers!"
        format.html { redirect_to(group_path(group_id)) }
      end
    end
  end

Parameters being passed in are:

Parameters: {"commit"=>"Submit", "authenticity_token"=>"C35lovRRjJzekruZiwTZjaMs4KgwiEJnXn10b0nD+0w=", "utf8"=>"✓", "user_id"=>["18"], "approver"=>{"group_id"=>"13"}}

And looking at my logs, the debug message in the action prints ’13’ as the correct value. However, the value being inserted into the database is always ‘1’ and here’s the snippet from the logs:

INSERT INTO `approvers` (`user_id`, `updated_at`, `created_at`, `group_id`) VALUES (1, '2011-07-13 04:58:51', '2011-07-13 04:58:51', 13)

To further complicate matters, in order to debug, if I change line 5 of the action to:

@approver.user_id = 19

it all works fine.

Can anyone explain what I’m doing wrong?

Answer 1

The group_id isn’t your problem, that is going through fine. Your problem is this:

"user_id"=>["18"]

So params[:user_id] is actually an array but you’re treating it like an ID. Then, someone inside Rails is converting that array to 1. When you say this:

@approver.user_id = 19

Everything works because you’re assigning a Fixnum to user_id and that’s what user_id expects.

You need to figure out why you’re getting an array user_id and then fix that. Or, figure out what you should do with an array, maybe @approver.user_id = params[:user_id][0] makes sense, maybe not.