Rails3 - Dirty Object Not Reporting?

rubyonrails-talk
1

So, I'm attempting to make sure that the associated user_id of an object cannot be changed on update and I'm doing this with a before_update callback and this method in the model:

    before_update :lock_user_id

    def lock_user_id       if self.user_id_changed?         self.user_id = self.user_id_was unless self.user_id_was == nil       end       true     end

but this spec fails:

  it "user_id cannot be changed once QR has been created" do     @qr.update_attributes(:user_id => -1)     @qr.user_id.should == @user.id   end

at first I thought it was that update_attributes did not do a complete save (not that i've ever enabled partial saves), but this alternate spec also fails:

  it "user_id cannot be changed once QR has been created" do     @qr.user_id = 99     @qr.save     @qr.user_id.should == @user.id   end

even stranger is that a method in another model which does the same thing for another attribute passes its test.

Anybody have any idea what i'm doing wrong/alternate suggestions?

Thanks.

2

Only thing I could think of is validations for QR did not pass, which means that the before_update callback doesn’t get to be called at all.

3

Change @qr.update_attributes to @qr.update_attributes!, and I'll bet you see that @qr failed validations and never saved. I make it a habit to always use update_attributes! in tests, so that a failure raises an exception.

- D

4

You guys were absolutely right, it wasn't passing validations and was not saved. Using update_attributes! demonstrated that, and I'm making it a point to remember that.

Thanks to both of you!