15

I am developing a Rails 3.2 application with the following models:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  # Associations
  belongs_to :authenticatable, polymorphic: true

  # Validations
  validates :authenticatable, presence: true # this is the critical line
end

class Physician < ActiveRecord::Base
  attr_accessible :user_attributes

  # Associations
  has_one :user, as: :authenticatable
  accepts_nested_attributes_for :user
end

What I am trying to do is validate whether a user always has an authenticatable parent. This works fine in itself, but in my form the user model complains that the authenticatable is not present.

I am using the following controller to show a form for a new physician which accepts nested attributes for the user:

def new
  @physician = Physician.new
  @physician.build_user

  respond_to do |format|
    format.html # new.html.erb
    format.json { render json: @physician }
  end
end

And this is my create method:

def create
  @physician = Physician.new(params[:physician])

  respond_to do |format|
    if @physician.save
      format.html { redirect_to @physician, notice: 'Physician was successfully created.' }
      format.json { render json: @physician, status: :created, location: @physician }
    else
      format.html { render action: "new" }
      format.json { render json: @physician.errors, status: :unprocessable_entity }
    end
  end
end

On submitting the form, it says that the user's authenticatable must not be empty. However, the authenticatable_id and authenticatable_type should be assigned as soon as @physician is saved. It works fine if I use the same form to edit a physician and its user, since then the id and type are assigned.

What am I doing wrong here?

Dennis Hackethal
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5 Answers5

9

I believe this is expected:

https://github.com/rails/rails/issues/1629#issuecomment-11033182 ( last two comments).

Also check this out from rails api:

One-to-one associations

Assigning an object to a has_one association automatically saves that object and the object being replaced (if there is one), in order to update their foreign keys - except if the parent object is unsaved (new_record? == true).

If either of these saves fail (due to one of the objects being invalid), an ActiveRecord::RecordNotSaved exception is raised and the assignment is cancelled.

If you wish to assign an object to a has_one association without saving it, use the build_association method (documented below). The object being replaced will still be saved to update its foreign key.

Assigning an object to a belongs_to association does not save the object, since the foreign key field belongs on the parent. It does not save the parent either.

and this

build_association(attributes = {}) Returns a new object of the associated type that has been instantiated with attributes and linked to this object through a foreign key, but has not yet been saved.

You have to create a Parent first. Then assign it's id to polymorphic object.

From what I can see, you create an object Physician.new which builds User but at this point it's not saved yet, so it doesn't have an id, so there is nothing to assign to polymorphic object. So validation will always fail since it's called before save.

In other words: In your case when you call build_user, it returns User.new NOT User.create . Therefore authenticatable doesn't have a authenticatable_id assigned.

You have several options:

  • Save associated user first.

    OR

  • Move validation in to after_save callback ( Possible but very annoying and bad)

    OR

  • Change your app structure - maybe avoid polymorphic association and switch to has_many through? Hard for me to judge since I don't know internals and business requirements. But it seems to me this is not a good candidate for polymorphic association. Will you have more models than just User that will be authenticatable?

IMHO the best candidates for polymorphic associations are things like Phones, Addresses, etc. Address can belong to User, Customer, Company, Organization, Area51 etc, be Home, Shipping or Billing category i.e. It can MORPH to accommodate multiple uses, so it's a good object to extract. But Authenticatable seems to me a bit contrived and adds complexity where there is no need for it. I don't see any other object needing to be authenticable.

If you could present your Authenticatable model and your reasoning and maybe migrations (?) I could advise you more. Right now I'm just pulling this out of thin air :-) But it seems like a good candidate for refactoring.

Community
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konung
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  • Thanks for your thorough answer! I have not developed this application any further, I guess in the future the best way will be to just validate the presence of the authenticatable_id. Thanks! – Dennis Hackethal Jun 26 '13 at 21:53
  • No problem. Maybe it will be helpful to someone else and will save a few gray hairs :-). If you think my answer addressed your problem, please accept it. – konung Jul 02 '13 at 19:46
3

You can just move validation to before_save callback and it will work fine: 

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  # Associations
  belongs_to :authenticatable, polymorphic: true

  # Validations
  before_save :check_authenticatable

  def check_authenticatable
    unless authenticatable
      errors[:customizable] << "can't be blank"
      false
    end
  end
end
Drakula2k
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0

In the create action, I had to assign it manually:

@physician = Physician.new(params[:physician])
@physician.user.authenticatable = @physician

My problem is a little different (has_many and with different validation), but I think this should work.

lulalala
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0

I was able to get this to work by overriding the nested attribute setter.

class Physician
  has_one :user, as: :authenticatable
  accepts_nested_attributes_for :user

  def user_attributes=(attribute_set)
    super(attribute_set.merge(authenticatable: self))
  end
end

To DRY it up, I moved the polymorphic code to a concern:

module Authenticatable
  extend ActiveSupport::Concern

  included do
    has_one :user, as: :authenticatable
    accepts_nested_attributes_for :user

    def user_attributes=(attribute_set)
      super(attribute_set.merge(authenticatable: self))
    end
  end
end

class Physician
  include Authenticatable
  ...
end

For has_many associations, the same can be accomplished with a map:

class Physician
  has_many :users, as: :authenticatable
  accepts_nested_attributes_for :users

  def users_attributes=(attribute_sets)
    super(
      attribute_sets.map do |attribute_set|
        attribute_set.merge(authenticatable: self)
      end
    )
  end
end

class User
  belongs_to :authenticatable, polymorphic: true
  validates :authenticatable, presence: true
end

All that said, I think konung's last comment is correct - your example does not look like a good candidate for polymorphism.

Nick
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-1

I'm not sure if this solves your problem, but I use something like this when validating that a polymorphic parent exists.

Here is some code that I used in a video model with the parent as the polymorphic association. This went in video.rb.

  validates_presence_of :parent_id, :unless => Proc.new { |p|
      # if it's a new record and parent is nil and addressable_type is set
      # then try to find the parent object in the ObjectSpace
      # if the parent object exists, then we're valid;
      # if not, let validates_presence_of do it's thing
      # Based on http://www.rebeccamiller-webster.com/2011/09/validate-polymorphic/
      if (new_record? && !parent && parent_type)
        parent = nil
        ObjectSpace.each_object(parent_type.constantize) do |o|
          parent = o if o.videos.include?(p) unless parent
        end
      end
      parent
    }
Cyrus
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