accepts_nested_attributes_for with find_or_create?

user_102493 0
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I'm using Rails' accepts_nested_attributes_for method with great success, but how can I have it not create new records if a record already exists?

By way of example:

Say I've got three models, Team, Membership, and Player, and each team has_many players through memberships, and players can belong to many teams. The Team model might then accept nested attributes for players, but that means that each player submitted through the combined team+player(s) form will be created as a new player record.

How should I go about doing things if I want to only create a new player record this way if there isn't already a player with the same name? If there is a player with the same name, no new player records should be created, but instead the correct player should be found and associated with the new team record.

validation forms activerecord ruby-on-rails
8 Answers

Answer by @François Beausoleil is awesome and solved a big problem. Great to learn about the concept of autosave_associated_record_for.

However, I found one corner case in this implementation. In case of update of existing post's author(A1), if a new author name(A2) is passed, it will end up changing the original(A1) author's name. 

p = Post.first
p.author #<Author id: 1, name: 'JK Rowling'>
# now edit is triggered, and new author(non existing) is passed(e.g: Cal Newport).

p.author #<Author id: 1, name: 'Cal Newport'>

Oringinal code:

class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :author, :autosave => true
  accepts_nested_attributes_for :author

  # If you need to validate the associated record, you can add a method like this:
  #     validate_associated_record_for_author
  def autosave_associated_records_for_author
    # Find or create the author by name
    if new_author = Author.find_by_name(author.name)
      self.author = new_author
    else
      self.author.save!
    end
  end
end

It is because, in case of edit, self.author for post will already be an author with id:1, it will go in else, block and will update that author instead of creating new one.

I changed the code(elsif condition) to mitigate this issue:

class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :author, :autosave => true
  accepts_nested_attributes_for :author

  # If you need to validate the associated record, you can add a method like this:
  #     validate_associated_record_for_author
  def autosave_associated_records_for_author
    # Find or create the author by name
    if new_author = Author.find_by_name(author.name)
      self.author = new_author
    elsif author && author.persisted? && author.changed?
      # New condition: if author is already allocated to post, but is changed, create a new author.
      self.author = Author.new(name: author.name)
    else
      # else create a new author
      self.author.save!
    end
  end
end
user_13764480
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