# Rails Object in DB is Invalid **URL:** \ **Category:** Deployment\ **Created:** [December 9, 2009, 4:14pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-object-in-db-is-invalid/180006 "2009-12-09T16:14:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![indigoi](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/i/b3f665/32.png) [@indigoi](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/indigoi)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2009, 4:14pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-object-in-db-is-invalid/180006/1 "2009-12-09T16:14:36Z")
I have a model named Tickets that being saved to the database even when invalid. This is stopping me from using validations to help prevent duplicate data being saved to the DB. In script/console > > Ticket.last.valid? > > False > > Ticket.first.valid? > > False If i try to see what errors are associated with this invalid object > > Ticket.last.errors.each{|attr,msg| puts “#{attr} - #{msg}\n” } > > {} So does anyone know how its possible to save an invalid object to the database, and how can i find what is making the object invalid? ---
**Author:** ![indigoi](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/i/b3f665/32.png) [@indigoi](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/indigoi)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2009, 5:36pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-object-in-db-is-invalid/180006/2 "2009-12-18T17:36:44Z")
I encountered a problem like this before and it turned out to be due to a callback which was returning false. Unbeknownst to me, if a callback returns false then the whole chain halts. Do you have any callbacks that fire before validation, and if so could any of them be returning false? ---
**Author:** ![indigoi](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/i/b3f665/32.png) [@indigoi](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/indigoi)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2009, 8:08pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-object-in-db-is-invalid/180006/3 "2009-12-18T20:08:31Z")
Max W. wrote: > I encountered a problem like this before and it turned out to be due to > a callback which was returning false. Unbeknownst to me, if a callback > returns false then the whole chain halts. Do you have any callbacks > that fire before validation, and if so could any of them be returning > false? Hmm…i only have a after\_create callback. Here is my ticket.rb model [http://pastie.org/749098](http://pastie.org/749098) Do any major problems jump out at you ? Even stranger, i turned on debugger level logging, and i only see one insertion into the database, yet was getting two database entries (but again only sometimes). When i tried writing to a file to help trace down the problem, i haven’t been able to reproduce the issue since: [http://pastie.org/749104](http://pastie.org/749104) I call the create like this: Ticket.find(:first, :conditions =\> {:from\_email =\> from\_email, :to\_email =\> to\_email, :body =\> message})||Ticket.create(:subject =\> subject, :from\_email =\> from\_email, :to\_email =\> to\_email, :body =\> message) Any Ideas? ---
**Author:** ![indigoi](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/i/b3f665/32.png) [@indigoi](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/indigoi)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2009, 10:17pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-object-in-db-is-invalid/180006/4 "2009-12-18T22:17:42Z")
Thanks for the catch on the attr\_accessible. We actually figured out that it was causing errors, I was wasn’t checking the error correctly. > You are correct “validates\_uniqueness\_of :to\_email, :scope =\> [:body, :from\_email]” This does throw an error on to\_email only if the body and from\_email are also not unique. And this is the error i get when i check the errors on the duplicate objects in the database I have tested this validation using rspec, and it behaves correctly… ---
**Author:** ![indigoi](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/i/b3f665/32.png) [@indigoi](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/indigoi)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2009, 9:58pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-object-in-db-is-invalid/180006/5 "2009-12-18T21:58:14Z")
the whole create/after\_create situation isn’t relevant to the question really. The question is ‘how come something fails validation but has no errors’. You’ve got a complicated kind of situation going on with the attr\_accessibles which i don’t really understand. I can see that you’ve got :to\_email in there twice which is wrong but probably not the source of this particular problem. I don’t really understand what this is for: validates\_uniqueness\_of :to\_email, :scope =\> [:body, :from\_email] You’re saying that the combination of :to\_email, :body and :from\_email has to be unique? Maybe that’s the problem but you’d expect to get an error raised if it wasn’t a unique combination. ---
**Author:** ![indigoi](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/i/b3f665/32.png) [@indigoi](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/indigoi)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2009, 11:50pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-object-in-db-is-invalid/180006/6 "2009-12-18T23:50:00Z")
err, so is the mystery solved now or what? Is the original problem still persisting? I noticed something that is confusing the issue: > > Ticket.last.valid? > > False > > Ticket.last.errors.each{|attr,msg| puts “#{attr} - #{msg}\n” } Here, you load a record out of the db with Ticket.last, then call valid on it. Then, you load it out of the db AGAIN, from scratch, with Ticket.last again. So, it doesn’t have any errors because the current object hasn’t had .valid called on it: it’s only after calling .valid that it would have anything in .errors. Anything loaded fresh from the db will never have any errors. So, instantiate an object and do all of your stuff with that. BTW, i usually call errors.full\_messages to see the errors. eg ticket = Ticket.last ticket.valid? ticket.errors.full\_messages Try that.