WARNING: Can't mass-assign these protected attributes: active

rubyonrails-talk
1

Hi,

I’m trying to understand this error:

WARNING: Can’t mass-assign these protected attributes: active

I had this error before when creating a record.I did not mark the attibutes posted from the form as attr_accessible, so when the following line tries to execute it throwed an Warning in the log, and the record was not saved.

@user = User.new(params[:user])

I find out that I have to have the attributes that I want to sent from the form marked as attr_accessible. But now I’m not understanding the same error when I try to update a single parameter from the record.

Let’s say I have this in my users controller:

#Get from the params hash the activation key

activation_key = params[:activation_key]

#Get from the params Hash the user id

user_id =params[:id]

@user = User.find(user_id)

@user.update_attributes!(:active=>1)

and in the model I don’t have the param active :marked as attr_accessible. And the following warning messages is logged and the record is not updated

WARNING: Can’t mass-assign these protected attributes: active

Shouldn’t this work without having the :param active marked with attr_accessible?

2

No - update_attributes, new etc. all behave the same way with respect to protected attributes.

Fred

3

You're still doing mass-assignment, just not with much "mass". The function you're looking for is either @user.update_attribute(:active, true) or just @user.active = true followed by @user.save.

--Matt Jones