Rails - Aug 2009 - Call AR belongs_to association accessor ID method on object assignment

Hi,

Haven''t been able to find this raised before but I''m sure it
must have
been. When assigning an object to a belongs_to association I would
like it to call the *association*_id= method instead of directly
updating the attributes array. This is because I want to modify the
behaviour when assigning a particular object without writing separate
methods for whether it''s just an ID being assigned or a full object.

Example:
a = Author.find(2)
b = Book.new
b.author = a  # Should call b.author_id=(val)

Is there already a simple way to achieve this? (without having to run
validation)

Changing it would be a one-line patch, but can anyone think of
problems this would introduce?

Thanks,
Andrew

On Aug 10, 4:40 am, Andrew France
<andrew+li...-nb9sXpffzH/10XsdtD+oqA@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Haven''t been able to find this raised before but I''m sure
it must have
> been. When assigning an object to a belongs_to association I would
> like it to call the *association*_id= method instead of directly
> updating the attributes array. This is because I want to modify the
> behaviour when assigning a particular object without writing separate
> methods for whether it''s just an ID being assigned or a full
object.
>
There''s a ticket on lighthouse about this, I seem to recall
there''s a
patch too.

Fred
> Example:
> a = Author.find(2)
> b = Book.new
> b.author = a  # Should call b.author_id=(val)
>
> Is there already a simple way to achieve this? (without having to run
> validation)
>
> Changing it would be a one-line patch, but can anyone think of
> problems this would introduce?
>
> Thanks,
> Andrew