Rails 5 - save rolls back because nested models parent model is not being saved before child model - ruby

Question

Ok folks, Rails 5 has really had its nuances differing from Rails 4. What I have going on is that every time I click the submit button on the form it reloads with the error Profile user must exist and Profile user can't be blank. The form loads fine including the nested models form, but for what ever reason it is failing to save the parent model before attempting to save the child model with the following output to the console:
Puma starting in single mode...
* Version 3.7.0 (ruby 2.2.6-p396), codename: Snowy Sagebrush
* Min threads: 5, max threads: 5
* Environment: development
* Listening on tcp://0.0.0.0:3000
Use Ctrl-C to stop
Started POST "/users" for 192.168.0.31 at 2017-03-09 18:51:04 -0500
Cannot render console from 192.168.0.31! Allowed networks: 127.0.0.1, ::1, 127.0.0.0/127.255.255.255
ActiveRecord::SchemaMigration Load (0.2ms) SELECT `schema_migrations`.* FROM `schema_migrations`
Processing by UsersController#create as HTML
Parameters: {"utf8"=>"✓", "authenticity_token"=>"JPKO+ppAYqwWS8tWeXhEtbUWynXREu9jYlF0KIlyPgUaabHSzjPZocSxCvr/WEm1r6wAQyT1CvA6hNkZWfPD3Q==", "user"=>{"username"=>"test", "password"=>"[FILTERED]", "user_type_id"=>"1", "profile_attributes"=>{"first_name"=>"123", "middle_name"=>"123", "last_name"=>"123", "email"=>"123#123.com", "phone_number"=>"1234567890", "cell_number"=>"1234567890"}}, "commit"=>"Create User"}
(0.1ms) BEGIN
(0.2ms) ROLLBACK
Rendering users/new.html.erb within layouts/application
Rendered users/_form.html.erb (112.5ms)
Rendered users/new.html.erb within layouts/application (118.7ms)
Completed 200 OK in 834ms (Views: 780.1ms | ActiveRecord: 2.2ms)
I have have had other problems out of this relationship and I am thinking that maybe I need to rebuild the project.
Here is all of the relevant code around this issue:
###############################################################################
### Users Model
###############################################################################
class User < ApplicationRecord
has_one :profile, inverse_of: :user
accepts_nested_attributes_for :profile, allow_destroy: true
end
###############################################################################
### Profile Model
###############################################################################
class Profile < ApplicationRecord
belongs_to :user, inverse_of: :profile
validates_presence_of :user
end
###############################################################################
### Users Controller
###############################################################################
class UsersController < ApplicationController
before_action :set_user, only: [:show, :edit, :update, :destroy]
# GET /users
# GET /users.json
def index
#users = User.all
end
# GET /users/1
# GET /users/1.json
def show
#user.build_profile
end
# GET /users/new
def new
#user = User.new
#user.build_profile
end
# GET /users/1/edit
def edit
#user.build_profile
end
# POST /users
# POST /users.json
def create
#user = User.new(user_params)
respond_to do |format|
if #user.save
format.html { redirect_to #user, notice: 'User was successfully created.' }
format.json { render :show, status: :created, location: #user }
else
format.html { render :new }
format.json { render json: #user.errors, status: :unprocessable_entity }
end
end
end
# PATCH/PUT /users/1
# PATCH/PUT /users/1.json
def update
respond_to do |format|
if #user.update(user_params)
format.html { redirect_to #user, notice: 'User was successfully updated.' }
format.json { render :show, status: :ok, location: #user }
else
format.html { render :edit }
format.json { render json: #user.errors, status: :unprocessable_entity }
end
end
end
# DELETE /users/1
# DELETE /users/1.json
def destroy
#user.destroy
respond_to do |format|
format.html { redirect_to users_url, notice: 'User was successfully destroyed.' }
format.json { head :no_content }
end
end
private
# Use callbacks to share common setup or constraints between actions.
def set_user
#user = User.find(params[:id])
end
# Never trust parameters from the scary internet, only allow the white list through.
def user_params
params.require(:user).permit(:username, :password, :user_type_id, profile_attributes: [:id, :user_id, :first_name, :middle_name, :last_name, :phone_number, :cell_number, :email])
end
end
###############################################################################
### Form View
###############################################################################
<%= form_for(#user) do |f| %>
<% if user.errors.any? %>
<div id="error_explanation">
<h2><%= pluralize(user.errors.count, "error") %> prohibited this user from being saved:</h2>
<ul>
<% user.errors.full_messages.each do |message| %>
<li><%= message %></li>
<% end %>
<!--<li><%= debug f %></li>-->
</ul>
</div>
<% end %>
<div class="field">
<%= f.label :username %>
<%= f.text_field :username %>
</div>
<div class="field">
<%= f.label :password %>
<%= f.text_field :password %>
</div>
<div class="field">
<% if params[:trainer] == "true" %>
<%= f.label :user_type_id %>
<%= f.text_field :user_type_id, :readonly => true, :value => '2' %>
<% else %>
<%= f.label :user_type_id %>
<%= f.text_field :user_type_id, :readonly => true, :value => '1' %>
<% end %>
</div>
<h2>Account Profile</h2>
<%= f.fields_for :profile do |profile| %>
<%#= profile.inspect %>
<div>
<%= profile.label :first_name %>
<%= profile.text_field :first_name %>
</div>
<div>
<%= profile.label :middle_name %>
<%= profile.text_field :middle_name %>
</div>
<div>
<%= profile.label :last_name %>
<%= profile.text_field :last_name %>
</div>
<div>
<%= profile.label :email %>
<%= profile.text_field :email %>
</div>
<div>
<%= profile.label :phone_number %>
<%= profile.telephone_field :phone_number %>
</div>
<div>
<%= profile.label :cell_phone %>
<%= profile.telephone_field :cell_number %>
</div>
<% end %>
<div class="actions">
<%= f.submit %>
</div>
<%= debug params %>
<%= debug user %>
<%= debug user.profile %>
<% end %>

Answer 1

Alright I rephrased the question on another question and I finally found the answer to this. So I am pasting my answer from there, in case someone searches for the issue in the same fashion that I was asking the question here.
Ok, I am answering my own question because I know many people are struggling with this and I actually have the answer and not a vague response to the documentation.
First we will just be using a one to one relationship for this example. When you create your relationships you need to make sure that the parent model has the following
inverse_of:
autosave: true
accepts_nested_attributes_for :model, allow_destroy:true
Here is the Users model then I will explain,
class User < ApplicationRecord
has_one :profile, inverse_of: :user, autosave: true
accepts_nested_attributes_for :profile, allow_destroy: true
end
in Rails 5 you need inverse_of: because this tells Rails that there is a relationship through foreign key and that it needs to be set on the nested model when saving your form data. Now if you were to leave autosave: true off from the relationship line you are left with the user_id not saving to the profiles table and just the other columns, unless you have validations off and then it won't error out it will just save it without the user_id. What is going on here is autosave: true is making sure that the user record is saved first so that it has the user_id to store in the nested attributes for the profile model.
That is it in a nutshell why the user_id was not traversing to the child and it was rolling back rather than committing.
Also one last gotcha is there are some posts out there telling you in your controller for the edit route you should add #user.build_profile like I have in my post. DO NOT DO IT THEY ARE DEAD WRONG, after assessing the console output it results in
Started GET "/users/1/edit" for 192.168.0.31 at 2017-03-12 22:38:17 -0400
Cannot render console from 192.168.0.31! Allowed networks: 127.0.0.1, ::1, 127.0.0.0/127.255.255.255
Processing by UsersController#edit as HTML
Parameters: {"id"=>"1"}
User Load (0.4ms) SELECT `users`.* FROM `users` WHERE `users`.`id` = 1 LIMIT 1
Profile Load (0.5ms) SELECT `profiles`.* FROM `profiles` WHERE `profiles`.`user_id` = 1 LIMIT 1
(0.1ms) BEGIN
SQL (0.5ms) UPDATE `profiles` SET `user_id` = NULL, `updated_at` = '2017-03-13 02:38:17' WHERE `profiles`.`id` = 1
(59.5ms) COMMIT
Rendering users/edit.html.erb within layouts/application
Rendered users/_form.html.erb (44.8ms)
Rendered users/edit.html.erb within layouts/application (50.2ms)
Completed 200 OK in 174ms (Views: 98.6ms | ActiveRecord: 61.1ms)
If you look it is rebuilding the profile from scratch and resetting the user_id to null for the record that matches the current user you are editing. So be very careful of this as I have seen tons of posts making this suggestion and it cost me DAYS of research to find a solution!

Answer 2

Rails 6.1
I had a similar issue that was fixed by removing validates_presence_of :user and validates :user_id, presence: true from my profile model. Your model obviously did not have the same validations mine had, but I thought it may be useful to add this answer in case others do.
I did not need to add inverse_of or autosave to either model to get the nested attributes to save correctly.

Answer 3

I came across this question because I had the same problem but only for my rspec tests. I ended up doing rails db:reset RAILS_ENV=test and that solved it. I did not need to add inverse_of: :user or autosave:true to the models.
One theory you could check in a dev or production system is if your seed for the table somehow got off. So then it can't insert the user row because the id is in use and then the profile create fails because the user create failed. In postgresql you could run: SELECT setval('users_id_seq', (SELECT max(id) FROM users}));

Answer 4

I was having a similar issue (did not save with nested attributes).
In the controller, I changed my #user.build_profile to #user.profile.build(params[:profile]) and it solved the issue.