# User\_observer (restful\_authentication) causes failure in loading rails **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [September 18, 2008, 11:22pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/user-observer-restful-authentication-causes-failure-in-loading-rails/148987 "2008-09-18T23:22:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![decostop](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/4da419/32.png) [@decostop](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/decostop)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2008, 11:22pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/user-observer-restful-authentication-causes-failure-in-loading-rails/148987/1 "2008-09-18T23:22:29Z")
I have restful\_authentication in use on an app and it has been working fine, but I recently was changing the account creation flow and needed to enable the UserObserver. I did so by including it in the environment.rb (config.active\_record.observers = :user\_observer) and Rails wouldn’t start. I got the following error; source/communitysites/vendor/rails/activerecord/lib/active\_record/ base.rb:1672:in `method_missing_without_paginate': undefined method `format\_attribute’ for #Class:0x2256a14 (NoMethodError) from /source/communitysites/vendor/plugins/will\_paginate/lib/ will\_paginate/finder.rb:164:in `method_missing' from /source/communitysites/app/forums/models/post.rb:7 from /source/communitysites/vendor/rails/activesupport/lib/ active_support/dependencies.rb:216:in `load\_without\_new\_constant\_marking’ from /source/communitysites/vendor/rails/activesupport/lib/ active\_support/dependencies.rb:216:in `load_file' from /source/communitysites/vendor/rails/activesupport/lib/ active_support/dependencies.rb:355:in `new\_constants\_in’ from /source/communitysites/vendor/rails/activesupport/lib/ active\_support/dependencies.rb:215:in `load_file' from /source/communitysites/vendor/rails/activesupport/lib/ active_support/dependencies.rb:96:in `require\_or\_load’ from /source/communitysites/vendor/rails/activesupport/lib/ active\_support/dependencies.rb:261:in `load_missing_constant' ... 76 levels... from /source/communitysites/vendor/rails/activesupport/lib/ active_support/dependencies.rb:511:in `require’ from /source/communitysites/vendor/rails/railties/lib/commands/ server.rb:39 from script/server:3:in `require’ from script/server:3 I get the same error when all the contents of UserObserver are commented out, but don’t get it if I load a different arbitrarily named observer class. Adding some more debug statements to the Rails dependencies code provided me this information; > Booting Mongrel (use ‘script/server webrick’ to force WEBrick) > =\> Rails 2.1.0 application starting on [http://0.0.0.0:3000](http://0.0.0.0:3000) > =\> Call with -d to detach > =\> Ctrl-C to shutdown server > \*\* Starting Mongrel listening at 0.0.0.0:3000 > \*\* Starting Rails with development environment… > Error while attempting to load ‘’. Removing partially loaded constants > ([])… > Error while attempting to load ‘’. Removing partially loaded constants > ([])… > Error while attempting to load ‘’. Removing partially loaded constants > ([])… > Error while attempting to load ‘’. Removing partially loaded constants > ([])… > DEPRECATION WARNING: config.action\_view.cache\_template\_extensions > option has been deprecated and has no affect. Please remove it from > your config files. See [Ruby on Rails — A web-app framework that includes everything needed to create database-backed web applications according to the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern.](http://www.rubyonrails.org/deprecation) for > details. (called from send at ./script/…/config/…/vendor/rails/ > railties/lib/initializer.rb:464) > Error while attempting to load ‘’. Removing partially loaded constants > ([])… > Error while attempting to load ‘’. Removing partially loaded constants > ([“Post”])… > Error while attempting to load ‘’. Removing partially loaded constants > ([“Post”])… > Error while attempting to load ‘’. Removing partially loaded constants > ([“Forum”])… > Error while attempting to load ‘’. Removing partially loaded constants > ([“Post”])… > Error while attempting to load ‘’. Removing partially loaded constants > ([“Post”])… > Error while attempting to load ‘’. Removing partially loaded constants > ([“Forum”])… > Error while attempting to load ‘’. Removing partially loaded constants > ([“User”])… > Error while attempting to load ‘’. Removing partially loaded constants > ([“RAILS\_GEM\_VERSION”, “RedHillConsulting”, “Technoweenie”, > “RAILS\_DEFAULT\_LOGGER”, “NR\_CONFIG\_FILE”, “RPM\_AGENT\_ENABLED”, > “RPM\_DEVELOPER”, “RPM\_TRACERS\_ENABLED”, “RAILS\_CACHE”])… > Error while attempting to load ‘’. Removing partially loaded constants > ([])… > Exiting > Error while attempting to load ‘’. Removing partially loaded constants > ([“OPTIONS”])… After which I get the error. I am not very familiar with the Rails internals since I am fairly new to the platform as well as the Ruby language. Any tips on approaches for troubleshooting this (apparent dependencies issue) would be greatly appreciated. Kevin ---
**Author:** ![decostop](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/4da419/32.png) [@decostop](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/decostop)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2008, 11:35pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/user-observer-restful-authentication-causes-failure-in-loading-rails/148987/2 "2008-09-18T23:35:58Z")
It appears since the observer is setup and loads the observed class (User) and my User class has\_many posts my post class from Beast gets loaded. Looking through the code I found the format\_attribute class called in the Post class is defined in forums.rb file in my lib directory. In railties/lib/initializer.rb it seems load\_observers is pretty much the last thing called in initialization. However, obviously lib must get processed later in order to produce the error I am getting. I now just need to figure out how to get lib processed earlier or instead of config.active\_record.observers use UserObserver.instance somewhere where it will get called after lib gets processed. It appears that a UserObserver.instance call at the end of the forums.rb is a quick way to get around this, but far from clean/intuitive/well organized. Any recommendations on where the best place to handle this is?