Rails - Mar 2006 - problem with find()

I''m trying to update records in a table based on data I get back from a
form.

In the simplest case, the params structure returned from the form is:
{"illness"=>{"1"=>{"illness_date"=>"",
"qualifier"=>""}}}

The controller code works (i.e., updates the first record) when I do the
following:

params[:illness].each do 
       @rec = 1 
       @to_update = Illness.find(@rec)
       @to_update.qualifier = "test"
       @to_update.illness_date = "1990"
       @to_update.save
end

But when I do this:

params[:illness].each do 
       @rec = params[:illness]
       @to_update = Illness.find(@rec)
       @to_update.qualifier = "test"
       @to_update.illness_date = "1990"
       @to_update.save
end

I get an error message that says "Unknown key(s): 1"

Why does the find() work in one case and not the other?  According to the error
message, the find() is using the same value in either case.  ???

Can anyone help me understand this?  

Thanks in advance,
Bill
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Hi Bill

Try:
params[:illness].each do |key, value|
       @rec = key # This will be "1"
       @to_update = Illness.find(@rec)
       @to_update.qualifier = value[:qualifier]
       @to_update.illness_date = value[:illness_date]
       @to_update.save
end

It would probably be a good idea to put all these updates in a
transaction too, so that if any fail they all fail.

Hope that helps,
Cheers,
Dan
www.peoplehub.com.au

Hi Dan,

Thanks much for your reply.  I finally found the hash documentation in the
Programming Ruby PDF and had gotten it working with just about the exact
same code.  The only difference is that I used ''key'' in the
Illness.find()
statement rather than assigning it to a separate variable like you did.  Is
there a risk in doing it the way I did?

I''m very new to RoR and haven''t tackled transactions yet.  Is
the
documentation easy to find / understand?

Also, just fyi, I checked out your site and two of the image links at the
top right are giving a page not found errors.  Nice looking site, though!

Thanks again,
Bill

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dan Sketcher" <dansketcher@gmail.com>
To: <rails@lists.rubyonrails.org>
Sent: 2006-03-09 6:59 PM
Subject: Re: [Rails] problem with find()


Hi Bill

Try:
params[:illness].each do |key, value|
       @rec = key # This will be "1"
       @to_update = Illness.find(@rec)
       @to_update.qualifier = value[:qualifier]
       @to_update.illness_date = value[:illness_date]
       @to_update.save
end

It would probably be a good idea to put all these updates in a
transaction too, so that if any fail they all fail.

Hope that helps,
Cheers,
Dan
www.peoplehub.com.au
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No Bill, I only put it in a separate variable to match what you had done :)

Yeah, transactions are pretty simple, you would probably set up something like

ActiveRecord::Base.transaction do
   params[:illness].each do |key, value|
      @to_update = Illness.find(key)
      @to_update.qualifier = value[:qualifier]
      @to_update.illness_date = value[:illness_date]
      @to_update.save!
   end
end

If/when the exception is thrown on save!, the transaction is rolled
back and the exception is rethrown. So, you''ll need to catch
ActiveRecord::RecordInvalid and do something intelligent. If you want
to be a bit more clever about it and show which ones have errored,
it''d be better to do this:

begin
  ActiveRecord::Base.transaction do
    savestatus = []
    params[:illness].each do |key, value|
      @to_update = Illness.find(key)
      @to_update.qualifier = value[:qualifier]
      @to_update.illness_date = value[:illness_date]
      savestatus << @to_update.save
    end
    raise Exception if savestatus.include?(false)
  end
  flash[:notice] = "Saved successfully"
  redirect_to :action => "here" and return
rescue
  flash[:notice] = "Error saving record"
end

and then you could redisplay the objects with errors. For the docs,
just go to rails.rubyonrails.com and check out the
ActiveRecord::Transactions::ClassMethods doc.

Thanks for the heads-up.. I''m not getting a broken link but
I''ll have
a poke about and see if there''s a problem

Cheers,
Dan
www.peoplehub.com.au