# Child object saving fails **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [November 21, 2005, 8:44am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/child-object-saving-fails/48485 "2005-11-21T08:44:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![azraelnewtype](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/13edae/32.png) [@azraelnewtype](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/azraelnewtype)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2005, 8:44am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/child-object-saving-fails/48485/1 "2005-11-21T08:44:51Z")
This has me pulling out my hair, despite being what’s going to turn out to be a trivial problem. For the sake of argument, let’s say I have two database tables, updates and poems. The Update model includes has\_one :poem, and Poem has belongs\_to :update. poems the table has update\_id as well, just to be clear about how it’s laid out. Also, for the sake of argument I’ll mention that poems has a field called title, though there are others. When I build an update I don’t automatically insert a poem, because there isn’t necessarily going to be one per, but there’s an action to create a poem later on. This action succeeds, inserting a new row into poems with a unique id and linking to the correct update. If, at this point, I set the title, it will save to the database as well. However, once that object is attached to update, no amount of editing and saving @update.poem.save will ever do anything to the database. Editing the database directly will cause the page to return the correct values, so it is clearly looking in the right place, but save just won’t work. To make matters worse, or at least more maddening for me, throwing the save statement into an if statement will always return true, despite not actually saving anything. I’m sure I’m overlooking something stupid. Any help would be greatly appreciated. ---
**Author:** ![azraelnewtype](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/13edae/32.png) [@azraelnewtype](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/azraelnewtype)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2005, 9:23am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/child-object-saving-fails/48485/2 "2005-11-21T09:23:41Z")
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Nov 20, 2005, at 11:44 PM, Chris Eads wrote: > database directly will cause the page to return the correct values, so > it is clearly looking in the right place, but save just won’t work. > > To make matters worse, or at least more maddening for me, throwing the > save statement into an if statement will always return true, > despite not > actually saving anything. I’m sure I’m overlooking something stupid. > Any help would be greatly appreciated. update is a method of ActiveRecord::Base so you can’t use it as a name for your association. You may name it differently: has\_one :parent, :class\_name =\> ‘Update’ but it may be clearer to rethink the term Update; perhaps a more specific term such as Post would be appropriate. I’m sorry this error has caused you to pull your hair out. Rest assured, we are working to put it all back in. Rails should cry out when you use an existing method name and, better, it shouldn’t snatch up generic method names in the first place. This is assuming, of course, that the name ‘update’ was not chosen purely for the sake of argument 🙂 jeremy -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (Darwin) iD8DBQFDgYOwAQHALep9HFYRAsOYAJ9n6hAViIG8Bjppgw7kvbWzOMUQHwCdHASn hkYBlKQuGI+1vOLbQ2N3uTI= =SXl6 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ---
**Author:** ![azraelnewtype](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/13edae/32.png) [@azraelnewtype](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/azraelnewtype)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2005, 6:15pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/child-object-saving-fails/48485/3 "2005-11-21T18:15:07Z")
jeremy wrote: > update is a method of ActiveRecord::Base so you can’t use it as > a name for your association. You may name it differently: > has\_one :parent, :class\_name =\> ‘Update’ > but it may be clearer to rethink the term Update; perhaps a more > specific term such as Post would be appropriate. > > I’m sorry this error has caused you to pull your hair out. Rest > assured, we are working to put it all back in. Rails should cry > out when you use an existing method name and, better, it shouldn’t > snatch up generic method names in the first place. > > This is assuming, of course, that the name ‘update’ was not chosen > purely for the sake of argument 🙂 I never referenced update in any way it could have been mistaken for the method of ActiveRecord::Base (always used @update as the object), but just to be safe I did in fact change the table, the class, and everything that references it to Post (or the correct mutation thereof). The behavior is identical. Any other ideas? ---
**Author:** ![azraelnewtype](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/13edae/32.png) [@azraelnewtype](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/azraelnewtype)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2005, 6:53pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/child-object-saving-fails/48485/4 "2005-11-21T18:53:32Z")
just as a test i did: class User \< ActiveRecord::Base has\_one :poem end class Poem \< ActiveRecord::Base belongs\_to :user end where the tables are: ## users id name ## poems id title body user\_id then in console, i did: user = User.create(:name =\> “Bob”) poem = Poem.create(:title =\> “My Poem”, :body =\> “this is my poem”, :user\_id =\> user.id [http://user.id](http://user.id)) user.poem.title (outputs “My Poem”) user.poem.title = “My New Poem Title” user.poem.save user.poem.reload user.poem.title (outputs “My New Poem TItle”) ok, so that works now trying to duplicate your error: user = User.find\_by\_name(“Bob”) user.poem.title (outputs “My New Poem TItle”) user.poem.title = “My Really New Poem Title” user.poem.save user.poem.reload user.poem.title (outputs “My Really New Poem TItle”) everything works fine so all I can say is that there must be something you are (not) doing in your code. perhaps pasting the portion of the code that is giving you trouble will help. Chris