Rails: form submission isn't properly creating attributes?

Question

I'm trying to make an app to make photo albums that belong to many users, and users to have multiple photo albums. However, my @user.album.count doesn't seem to change whenever I try to create an album.

album/new.html.erb

<%= form_for (@album), url: user_albums_path, :html => { :id => "uploadform", :multipart => true } do |f| %>
<div>
    <%= f.label :name %>
    <%= f.text_field :name %>


    <%= f.label :description %>
    <%= f.text_area :description %>

    <br>

    <%=f.submit %>
</div>
<% end %>

albums controller

class AlbumsController < ApplicationController

    def index
      @user = User.find(params[:user_id])
      @albums = @user.albums.all

      respond_to do |format|
        format.html
        format.json { render json: @albums }
      end
    end

    def show
      @albums = Album.all
      @album = Album.find(params[:id])
      @photo = Photo.new
    end

    def update
    end

    def edit
    end

    def create
      @user = User.find(params[:user_id])
      @album = @user.albums.build(params[:album])
      respond_to do |format|
        if @album.save
          format.html { redirect_to user_path(@user), notice: 'Album was successfully created.' }
          format.json { render json: @album, status: :created, location: @album}
        else
          format.html { render action: "new" }
          format.json { render json: @album.errors, status: :unprocessable_entity }
        end
      end 
    end

    def new
      @user = User.find(params[:user_id])
      @album = Album.new
    end

    def destroy
    end

end

models

#album model
class Album < ActiveRecord::Base
  attr_accessible :avatar, :name, :description
  has_many :user_albums
  has_many :users, :through => :user_albums
  has_many :photos
end


#user model
class User < ActiveRecord::Base

  has_secure_password
  attr_accessible :email, :name, :password, :password_confirmation
  validates_presence_of :password, :on => :create

  validates_format_of :name, :with => /[A-Za-z]+/, :on => :create
  validates_format_of :email, :with => /\A([^@\s]+)@((?:[-a-z0-9]+\.)+[a-z]{2,})\Z/i, :on => :create
  validates_length_of :password, :minimum => 5, :on => :create

  has_many :user_albums
  has_many :albums, :through => :user_albums
  accepts_nested_attributes_for :albums

end

  #photo model (not up to there yet)
  class Photo < ActiveRecord::Base
    belongs_to :album
  end

config/routes

Pholder::Application.routes.draw do
resources :users do
  resources :albums 
end

resources :albums do
  resources :photos
end

root :to => "users#index"

this is my console

Started GET "/assets/application.js?body=1" for 127.0.0.1 at 2012-10-01 17:41:59 -0400 Served asset /application.js - 304 Not Modified (0ms) [2012-10-01 17:41:59] WARN Could not determine content-length of response body. Set content-length of the response or set Response#chunked = true

Started POST "/users/13/albums" for 127.0.0.1 at 2012-10-01 17:42:11 -0400 Processing by AlbumsController#create as HTML Parameters: {"utf8"=>"✓", "authenticity_token"=>"ttqQnEt1KFuwvYRU6MuOLgc5UprSE/zMzGMuzzZiZiE=", "album"=>{"name"=>"fdsafds", "description"=>"fdafdsfafdsfadsfsdsa"}, "commit"=>"Create Album", "user_id"=>"13"} User Load (0.1ms) SELECT "users".* FROM "users" WHERE "users"."id" = ? LIMIT 1 [["id", "13"]] (0.0ms) begin transaction SQL (0.3ms) INSERT INTO "albums" ("created_at", "description", "name", "updated_at") VALUES (?, ?, ?, ?) [["created_at", Mon, 01 Oct 2012 21:42:11 UTC +00:00], ["description", "fdafdsfafdsfadsfsdsa"], ["name", "fdsafds"], ["updated_at", Mon, 01 Oct 2012 21:42:11 UTC +00:00]] (5.6ms) commit transaction Redirected to http://localhost:3000/users/13 Completed 302 Found in 9ms (ActiveRecord: 6.0ms)

What does the logs says in your console ? Is the POST request processed but the albums controller ? I guess it ends with a ROLLBACK, which means the record could not be saved. You can track the error by printing @album.errors in your controller after saving it — pjam
hey pjam. sorry for the delay. I added my console contents. It looks like it works but when it redirects to the user#show after form submission, I have a @user.albums.count in the view but it says 0 — bigpotato
Could you paste your UserAlbum model ? It seems the problem is now about the associations between the model. The data is correctly inserted in the DataBase but it should also insert a row in the album_users table with the id of the newly created album and the id of the user (13 here). — pjam
apparently the albums are being posted/saved. I manage to print out the existing ones in my database without trouble. I think the issue is the album relationship with the users. Here is what I get when I type <%= @albums %> with @albums set to Album.all in my controller. [#<Album id: 1, name: "", created_at: "2012-09-28 03:54:28", updated_at: "2012-09-28 03:54:28", description: nil>, #<Album id: 2, name: "", created_at: "2012-09-29 22:28:09", updated_at: "2012-09-29 22:28:09", description: "">,... — bigpotato
By the way if somhehow your app is on github, just paste the link here, I'll give it a look locally to find the issue. — pjam

pjam pjam · Accepted Answer · 2012-10-01T23:32:42

Ok I found the problem. As you are creating the album through the user, with the build method

@album = @user.albums.build(params[:album])

then it's the user you have to save,

@user.save

So your new create method is

def create
  @user = User.find(params[:user_id])
  @album = @user.albums.build(params[:album])
  respond_to do |format|
    if @user.save
      print @album.errors
      format.html { redirect_to user_path(@user), notice: 'Album was successfully created.' }
      format.json { render json: @album, status: :created, location: @album}
    else
      format.html { render action: "new" }
      format.json { render json: @album.errors, status: :unprocessable_entity }
    end
  end
end

Rails: form submission isn't properly creating attributes?

1 Answers