Rails - Nov 2006 - any recommendations for handling a non autoincrement primary key

Hey everyone,

I''m working on an application that has a table with a nice natural
primary
key. Outside of the rails world it would be *the* primary key.

I would prefer to use this natural primary key and define associations that
use it. I''ve done so but the problem is that my form for entering a
record
in this table is currently failing. I''ve used
''set_primary_key'' in the model
and I guess when you do this that column is no longer considered an
attribute. In the activerecord code there is an array called @attributes,
and the method that loads this array checks to see if the column is the
primary key before adding the column to the array. My current guess is that
rails assumes primary keys are not set but rather assigned by the database.

The error occurs when using the form helper.

The column name is affiliate_id. The model has this declaration:

  set_primary_key :affiliate_id

The new form (originally a scaffold...) has this:

<tr><th align="right">Affiliate
Id:</th><td><%= text_field ''affiliate'',
''affiliate_id''%></td></tr>

Displaying the ''new'' form gives me:

undefined method `affiliate_id_before_type_cast'' for
#<Affiliate:0xb7394660>

Has anyone had success at *setting* a primary key in a form.

Thanks,

-Kelly
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