belongs_to trigger on update?

[Ed W]

This may be a rails bug, but I can't figure out how to do attribute
overrides for the attribute created for a belongs_to relationship

I have a simple relationship:
User belongs_to Domain

User has a property email_address which I want to update if Domain is
ever changed

I tried in User

def domain=(new_domain)
super
end

but now the ability to assign new domains is totally broken and no
longer works (simply nothing happens)...

I suspect that this needs some magic reflection hacking, but can someone
set me on the right path to figure out how to work around it. Basically
I want to just intercept the update call and run some custom code to
update the User model.

Grateful for some ideas

Ed W

[Mark Reginald James]

Yes, you can't use super because AR defines the domain= method on
the User class itself.

Instead use:

def domain_with_email_update=(new_domain)
self.email_address = blah(new_domain)
self.domain_without_email_update = new_domain
end
alias_method_chain :domain=, :email_update

Now user.domain = ... will also do an email update, but you can
use user.domain_without_email_update = ... for cases where you
don't want the email address updated.

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