Misleading concept around associations

rubyonrails-core
1

I was working on a custom association for my gem GitHub - crashtech/torque-postgresql: Add support to complex resources of PostgreSQL, like data types, array associations, and auxiliary statements (CTE) and I found a misleading concept, so I want to confirm if it could/should be fixed.

The problem is related to AutosaveAssociation class, more precisely #add_autosave_association_callbacks. The condition states that any collection based association will be saved after the owner record is saved.

However, the order is more related to where the foreing_key is saved than the number of records. Every time that the foreing_key is stored in the owner, it should always save the association before saving the record, regardless if it is a collection or not.

I was able to go around this condition by overriding the add_autosave_association_callbacks method. But, if the condition was aligned to the concept, then I could have only overridden save_belongs_to_association. Then, here is my proposed fix:

def add_autosave_association_callbacks(reflection)
  save_method = :"autosave_associated_records_for_#{reflection.name}"

  if reflection.belongs_to?
    define_non_cyclic_method(save_method) { throw(:abort) if save_belongs_to_association(reflection) == false }
    before_save save_method
  elsif reflection.has_one?
    define_method(save_method) { save_has_one_association(reflection) } unless method_defined?(save_method)
    # Configures two callbacks instead of a single after_save so that
    # the model may rely on their execution order relative to its
    # own callbacks.
    #
    # For example, given that after_creates run before after_saves, if
    # we configured instead an after_save there would be no way to fire
    # a custom after_create callback after the child association gets
    # created.
    after_create save_method
    after_update save_method
  else
    around_save :around_save_collection_association

    define_non_cyclic_method(save_method) { save_collection_association(reflection) }
    # Doesn't use after_save as that would save associations added in after_create/after_update twice
    after_create save_method
    after_update save_method
  end

  define_autosave_validation_callbacks(reflection)
end