user_observer (restful_authentication) causes failure in loading rails

rubyonrails-talk
1

I have restful_authentication in use on an app and it has been working fine, but I recently was changing the account creation flow and needed to enable the UserObserver. I did so by including it in the environment.rb (config.active_record.observers = :user_observer) and Rails wouldn't start.

I got the following error; source/communitysites/vendor/rails/activerecord/lib/active_record/ base.rb:1672:in `method_missing_without_paginate': undefined method `format_attribute' for #<Class:0x2256a14> (NoMethodError)   from /source/communitysites/vendor/plugins/will_paginate/lib/ will_paginate/finder.rb:164:in `method_missing'   from /source/communitysites/app/forums/models/post.rb:7   from /source/communitysites/vendor/rails/activesupport/lib/ active_support/dependencies.rb:216:in `load_without_new_constant_marking'   from /source/communitysites/vendor/rails/activesupport/lib/ active_support/dependencies.rb:216:in `load_file'   from /source/communitysites/vendor/rails/activesupport/lib/ active_support/dependencies.rb:355:in `new_constants_in'   from /source/communitysites/vendor/rails/activesupport/lib/ active_support/dependencies.rb:215:in `load_file'   from /source/communitysites/vendor/rails/activesupport/lib/ active_support/dependencies.rb:96:in `require_or_load'   from /source/communitysites/vendor/rails/activesupport/lib/ active_support/dependencies.rb:261:in `load_missing_constant'    ... 76 levels...   from /source/communitysites/vendor/rails/activesupport/lib/ active_support/dependencies.rb:511:in `require'   from /source/communitysites/vendor/rails/railties/lib/commands/ server.rb:39   from script/server:3:in `require'   from script/server:3

I get the same error when all the contents of UserObserver are commented out, but don't get it if I load a different arbitrarily named observer class. Adding some more debug statements to the Rails dependencies code provided me this information;

Booting Mongrel (use 'script/server webrick' to force WEBrick)

=> Rails 2.1.0 application starting on http://0.0.0.0:3000 => Call with -d to detach => Ctrl-C to shutdown server ** Starting Mongrel listening at 0.0.0.0:3000 ** Starting Rails with development environment... Error while attempting to load ''. Removing partially loaded constants ()... Error while attempting to load ''. Removing partially loaded constants ()... Error while attempting to load ''. Removing partially loaded constants ()... Error while attempting to load ''. Removing partially loaded constants ()... DEPRECATION WARNING: config.action_view.cache_template_extensions option has been deprecated and has no affect. Please remove it from your config files. See Ruby on Rails — A web-app framework that includes everything needed to create database-backed web applications according to the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern. for details. (called from send at ./script/../config/../vendor/rails/ railties/lib/initializer.rb:464) Error while attempting to load ''. Removing partially loaded constants ()... Error while attempting to load ''. Removing partially loaded constants (["Post"])... Error while attempting to load ''. Removing partially loaded constants (["Post"])... Error while attempting to load ''. Removing partially loaded constants (["Forum"])... Error while attempting to load ''. Removing partially loaded constants (["Post"])... Error while attempting to load ''. Removing partially loaded constants (["Post"])... Error while attempting to load ''. Removing partially loaded constants (["Forum"])... Error while attempting to load ''. Removing partially loaded constants (["User"])... Error while attempting to load ''. Removing partially loaded constants (["RAILS_GEM_VERSION", "RedHillConsulting", "Technoweenie", "RAILS_DEFAULT_LOGGER", "NR_CONFIG_FILE", "RPM_AGENT_ENABLED", "RPM_DEVELOPER", "RPM_TRACERS_ENABLED", "RAILS_CACHE"])... Error while attempting to load ''. Removing partially loaded constants ()... Exiting Error while attempting to load ''. Removing partially loaded constants (["OPTIONS"])...

After which I get the error. I am not very familiar with the Rails internals since I am fairly new to the platform as well as the Ruby language. Any tips on approaches for troubleshooting this (apparent dependencies issue) would be greatly appreciated.

Kevin

2

It appears since the observer is setup and loads the observed class (User) and my User class has_many posts my post class from Beast gets loaded. Looking through the code I found the format_attribute class called in the Post class is defined in forums.rb file in my lib directory.

In railties/lib/initializer.rb it seems load_observers is pretty much the last thing called in initialization. However, obviously lib must get processed later in order to produce the error I am getting. I now just need to figure out how to get lib processed earlier or instead of config.active_record.observers use UserObserver.instance somewhere where it will get called after lib gets processed. It appears that a UserObserver.instance call at the end of the forums.rb is a quick way to get around this, but far from clean/intuitive/well organized. Any recommendations on where the best place to handle this is?