FormHelper and write-only fields

rubyonrails-core
1

Hi!

Until recently I used a User model with a write-only password field on it. The idea is to pick that cleartext password up, perform some salting and hashing on it and then write that to the database. So my model used a method like this:

def password=(cleartext_password)   @password = cleartext_password end

Worked fine in combination with form_for and f.password_field :password. But RC2 changed that and now complains about missing method password_before_type_cast. The only workaround I've found is to implement that method. (See https://rails.lighthouseapp.com/projects/8994/tickets/5471-formhelper-problem-with-write-only-fields for a diff with a failing test in actionpack.)

Can anybody shed some light on this?

Thank you, Oliver

2

FormHelper needs a read method, too. You can return a blank string if you like but you need to respond_to the field name in question.

You're most likely doing something that's not playing nicely with this commit's change to value_before_type_cast:

http://github.com/rails/rails/commit/fb0bd8c1092db51888ec4bb72af6c595e13c31fa

3

I'm about to push a change related with this but definitely is not going to solve your problem. You need a database field or a field reader. Also your code doesn't work even before my commit. You can check it out ...

Let's review it ...

object.respond_to?(method_name + "_before_type_cast") ? object.send(method_name + "_before_type_cast") : object.send(method_name)

Your object doesn't respond_to password_before_type_cast so this code ends trying to execute object.send('password') and you don't have a reader neither.

Oliver, perhaps what you want to do is f.password_field :password, :value => '' and instead of writing the password= method you can do attr_writer :password :wink:

I hope my message can clarify the situation.

Cheers, Santiago.