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Unexpected side effect of update_attribute implementation change on associations and attributes

#5095

I believe this was the result of 01629d180468049d17a8 as rolling back to the commit before removed the issue.

Having:

class Account < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :users
end

class User < ActiveRecord::Base

  belongs_to :account
  
  after_create :create_account
  
  def create_account
    self.update_attribute(:account, Account.create) if self.account_id.blank?
  end
  
end

I now get a sqlite3 error that there is no column 'account' for the Users table. I'm not sure if this was intentional or not. Additionally:

class Task < History

  attr_accessor :complete_note
  
  def complete_note=(complete_note)
    self.body = body + "\n" + complete_note
  end

end

@task.update_attribute(:complete_note, "Foo Bar")

Produces the same error, no such column 'complete_note' in 'tasks' table.

The commit also mentions a change where updated_at doesn't change with update_attribute, does that pose any issues for anyone else or is it just me?

Reported by Hugh Kelsey · July 12th, 2010 @ 04:01 PM

Activity

Neeraj Singh
- Milestone set to 3.x
- Tag set to rails 3, activerecord
- Assigned user set to Neeraj Singh
- Importance changed from to Low
July 12th, 2010 @ 05:25 PM
Neeraj Singh
- State changed from new to wontfix
The commit also mentions a change where updated_at doesn't change with update_attribute, does that pose any issues for anyone else or is it just me?

updated_at/on will always change. I am not able to see where in commit message I mentioned that updated_at/on will not change.

The idea behind update_attribute is that user should be pretty much assured that update_attribute changes the field in the database. That is why validation and callbacks are not called so that no one can prevent the update to the database.

case 1
```
self.update_attribute(:account, Account.create)
```
Above case is not supported and that is okay. That case can be changed to
```
self.update_attribute(:account_id, Account.create.id)
```
case 2
```
@task.update_attribute(:complete_note, "Foo Bar")
```
In the above case only database change should take place is to change updated_at/on. And for that you can simply do
```
@task.touch
```
I understand that update_attribute would be used in a lot lesser number of cases and that is the intent. update_attributes should be used in majority of cases and update_attribute should be limited to a few cases where you want to update a field. For example after sending out an email. If a bug prevents marking that field as updated then user might get a number of emails delivered to him/her.

Discussed the issue with José Valim and he is okay with it.
July 12th, 2010 @ 09:01 PM