Why can't I save to a join table in a migration or rake tas

Rails
1

u.roles << member_role
p “#{u.roles.size}”
p “added member role to #{u.name}”
end

and see what happens

Chris,

Thanks so much for providing another set of eyes. I took your suggestion
and expanded on it. Quickly here was the problem:

anonymous.roles.each {|r| r.destroy }

What that actually does is delete all the roles_users associations that
point to the any roles the anonymous user has:

This is the command that does what I intended:

anonymous.roles.delete_all

For anybody else that finds this email in the future here’s what I put
in the rake task to help me debug the problem:

task :setup_roles => :environment do
anonymous_role = Role.find_or_create_by_title(‘anonymous’)
member_role = Role.find_or_create_by_title(‘member’)
mananger_role = Role.find_or_create_by_title(‘manager’)
author_role = Role.find_or_create_by_title(‘author’)
admin_role = Role.find_or_create_by_title(‘admin’)
User.find(:all).each do |u|
puts “\n–#{u.name}–”
puts " roles: size: #{u.roles.size}"
u.roles << member_role
puts " added member role to #{u.name}: u.roles << member_role"
puts " roles: size: :#{u.roles.size}"
end
puts “\n1: Checking Users for Roles:”
User.find(:all).each do |u|
puts “\n–#{u.name}–”
puts " roles: size: #{u.roles.size}"
end
anonymous = User.find_by_login(‘Anonymous’)
anonymous.roles.each {|r| r.destroy } # *** this is the problem ***
anonymous.roles << anonymous_role
stephen = User.find_by_login(‘stephen’)
stephen.roles << admin_role
puts “\n2: Checking Users for Roles:”
User.find(:all).each do |u|
puts “\n–#{u.name}–”
puts " roles: size: #{u.roles.size}"
end
end

On the first loop I got output like this:

–Anonymous User–
roles: size: 0
added member role to Anonymous User: u.roles << member_role
roles: size: :1

–Stephen B.–
roles: size: 0
added member role to Stephen B.: u.roles << member_role
roles: size: :1

–Carolyn Staudt–
roles: size: 0
added member role to Carolyn Staudt: u.roles << member_role
roles: size: :1

…

Everything still looks fine right after that:

1: Checking Users for Roles:

–Anonymous User–
roles: size: 1

–Stephen B.–
roles: size: 1

–Carolyn Staudt–
roles: size: 1

…

But at the end it looks like this:

2: Checking Users for Roles:

–Anonymous User–
roles: size: 1

–Stephen B.–
roles: size: 1

–Carolyn Staudt–
roles: size: 0

…

All the roles_users associations I made for the Users are gone.