validates presence of foreign_key & auto child save
Rasmus Nielsen
You so you know, I'm fairly new to rails - I still have a lot learn.
For fun I'm trying to create a forum in rails. I have some problems with
the create method of the topic resource. I've set up a virtual attribute
called text for topic, to use for mass assignment:
In topics_controller.rb:
@topic = Topic.new(params[:topic])
In topic.rb:
def text=(text)
posts.build(:text => text)
end
The topic model handles the text-attributes by building a post model
through its association.
This is pretty neat I think! It results in very readable and structured
code. But when I try to save the topic with @topic.save it gives me the
error that "Posts is invalid". This is because post.rb includes the
following:
validates_presence_of :topic_id
When the validation are run (just before the topic is actually saved)
rails also validates the children of the topic - that is the post model.
As this post has not yet defined a topic_id its validations fail.
The topic id will not be available until the topic is created in the
database - and the topic will not be created in the database until the
post validates - and the post will not validate until the topic id is
defined.
I hope you can see the cycle of dependencies.
If I just remove validates_presence_of :topic_id it works like a charm.
Rails even defines the posts topic id through the association set up
with posts.build(). However, to me it seems like a "dirty" solution to
the problem?
What would you do here? Any recommendations/ideas?
Thanks in advance.
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Mark Reginald James
The usual solution is:
class Topic
def text=(text)
# Rails should be setting the belongs-to object automatically here
posts.build(:text => text, :topic => self)
text # Make sure you return something that's expected
end
end
class Post
validates_presence_of :topic
end
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