I was working on a project this weekend and came across an issue that
hung me up for hours. The application will have an area to manage
contacts, so I have a Person model, which has_many email_addresses,
among other things. So in order to add another email_address to my
form using rjs, I send a request to the ContactMethodsController with
a the type param set to email_address. It renders the rjs, which
renders a partial and inserts it into my form. In order to accomplish
this I needed to generate a temporary ID for each email address so I
could use them in a form, generate urls with them, and when/if errors
occur the id would remain the same so the form could pick up the
errors. I do not want to save the models unless they are filled in.
This scheme works wonderfully in development, but when I push it to
production, it breaks because the generated id becomes nil after an
action other than index/new is run in the PeopleController. The index
action can be refreshed, but as soon as another action is called it
blows up.
class Person < ActiveRecord::Base
with_options :dependent => :destroy do |person|
person.has_many :phone_numbers, :as => :phoneable
person.has_many :email_addresses, :as => :emailable
person.has_many :addresses, :as => :addressable
end
def update_contact_methods(data)
result = {}
[ :email_addresses, :phone_numbers, :addresses ].collect do |c|
klass = c.to_s.classify.constantize
x = c.to_s.singularize.split(’_’)[0]
klass.transaction do
unless new_record?
klass.destroy_all("#{x}able_id = #{self.id} AND #{x}able_type =
‘#{self.class}’")
end
result[c] = data[c].values.collect{|v|
klass.new(v) }.delete_if(&:blank?)
end
end
update_attributes(result)
end
def update_from_params(person_params)
contact_params = person_params.delete(:contact_data)
update_attributes(person_params)
reload
update_contact_methods(contact_params)
errors.empty?
end
def set_place_holder_data
give the person a temp id
self.id ||= 0
add an address it there is none
self.addresses = [ self.addresses.build ] if self.addresses.empty?
add phone numbers if we have none
self.email_addresses = [ self.email_addresses.build ] if
self.email_addresses.empty?
add phone numbers if we have none
self.phone_numbers = [ self.phone_numbers.build ] if
self.phone_numbers.empty?
end
end
Note that when set_place_holder_data is called a temporary id of 0 is
set if the id is not set and we add a dummy email_address if one does
not exist, so the fields show up on the form.
[code=]class EmailAddress < ActiveRecord::Base
Associations
belongs_to :emailable, :polymorphic => true
Attributes
cattr_reader :locations
@@locations = %w(HOME WORK OTHER)
Validation
validates_length_of :address, :within => 7…80
validates_format_of :address, :with => /^([^@\s]+)@((?:[-a-z0-9]+.)+
[a-z]{2,})$/
Class Methods
Instance Methods
def generated_identifier
@generated_identifier ||= generate_identifier
end
def id_with_generated_identifier
new_record? ? generated_identifier : id_without_generated_identifier
end
alias_method_chain :id, :generated_identifier
def blank?
address.blank?
end
private
def generate_identifier(len=10)
chars = (“a”…“z”).to_a + (1…9).to_a
identifier = “”
1.upto(len){|i| identifier += chars[rand(chars.size-1)].to_s }
identifier
end
end
Note that the EmailAddress model generates an ID for itself if it is a
new record. this is done so I can generate urls using named routes and
a dom_id for the object on a form where there may be a couple “new”
EmailAddresses. For example in a view I would:
class PeopleController < ApplicationController
helper :contact_methods
GET /people
def index
preload the new form
@person = provider.new
set place holder data for the form
@person.set_place_holder_data
get all of the contacts with eagerly loaded data
@people = provider.find_roots(:all)
respond_to do |format|
format.html # index.rhtml
format.xml { render :xml => @people.to_xml }
end
end
GET /people/1
def show
@person = provider.find_with_includes(params[:id])
respond_to do |format|
format.html # show.rhtml
format.xml { render :xml => @person.to_xml }
end
end
POST /people
def create
@person = provider.new
respond_to do |format|
if @person.update_from_params(params[:person])
flash[:notice] = 'Contact was successfully created.'
format.js {}
else
format.js {
render :update do |page|
page[:new_person_form_errors].replace_html
error_messages_for(:person)
end
}
end
end
end
GET /people/1/edit
def edit
@person = provider.find_and_set_place_holders(params[:id])
end
PUT /people/1
def update
@person = provider.find(params[:id])
respond_to do |format|
if @person.update_from_params(params[:person])
flash[:notice] = 'Contact was successfully updated.'
format.js
format.html { redirect_to people_url }
else
format.html { render :action => "edit" }
end
end
end
private
def provider
current_account.people
end
end
class ContactMethodsController < ApplicationController
def new
@object = provider.new
respond_to do |format|
format.js
end
end
def destroy
if params[:id].match(/^\d+$/)
@object = provider.find(params[:id])
@object.destroy
end
@object = provider.new
respond_to do |format|
format.js
end
end
private
def provider
if params[:person_id].eql?(‘0’)
@person = current_account.people.new
@person.set_place_holder_data
end
@person ||= current_account.people.find(params[:person_id])
case params[:type]
when ‘phone_number’
return @person.phone_numbers
when ‘email_address’
return @person.email_addresses
when ‘address’
return @person.addresses
end
end
end
This maybe a bit confusing, but the problem occurs when I put this
code into production. The first time you load the “new” action in the
PeopleController it works fine. The second time it gives me a 500
error because the ID has disappeared from the EmailAddress and I am
using named route functions to generated urls which require it. At
first I though it had something to do with the generated_identifier
not being set the second time. Not the case, actually I put a raise
statement in the aliased method id_with_generated_identifier which
never gets called after the first execution. After hours of debugging
I figured out that if I turn off the cache_classes setting in
production/environment.rb it works great. Slow … but great. It seems
that the alias_method_chain which creates an alias from
id_with_generated_identifier to id is broken after the first
execution. I am not sure why this is. Does anyone have an idea why
this would be happening? If not, does anyone have a better way of
accomplishing this that would allow me to cache my classes again? If
more clarification is needed please let me know.
Thanks,
Nicholas