Question

This is a repost on another issue, better isolated this time.
In my environment.rb file I changed this line:

config.time_zone = 'UTC'

to this line:

config.active_record.default_timezone = :utc

Ever since, this call:

Category.find(1).subcategories.map(&:id)

Fails on “Stack level too deep” error after the second time it is run in the development environment when config.cache_classes = false. If config.cache_classes = true, the problem does not occur.
The error is a result of the following code in active_record/attribute_methods.rb around line 252:

def method_missing(method_id, *args, &block)
...

    if self.class.primary_key.to_s == method_name
        id
    ....

The call to the “id” function re-calls method_missing and there is nothing that prevents the id to be called over and over again, resulting in stack level too deep.

I’m using Rails 2.3.8.
The Category model has_many :subcategories.
The call fails on variants of that line above (e.g. Category.first.subcategory_ids, use of “each” instead of “map”, etc.).

Any thoughts will be highly appreciated.

Thanks!
Amit

Answer 1

— This answer is copied from my original post here.

Finally solved!
After posting a third question and with help of trptcolin, I could confirm a working solution.

The problem: I was using require to include models from within Table-less models (classes that are in app/models but do not extend ActiveRecord::Base). For example, I had a class FilterCategory that performed require 'category'. This messed up with Rails’ class caching.
I had to use require in the first place since lines such as Category.find :all failed.

The solution (credit goes to trptcolin): replace Category.find :all with ::Category.find :all. This works without the need to explicitly require any model, and therefore doesn’t cause any class caching problems.

The “stack too deep” problem also goes away when using config.active_record.default_timezone = :utc