How to bypass validations when creating a rails object? - ruby-on-rails

Question

I have following rake task to populate my dev database with dummy data. I get an error that my weight and reps can't be blank in the make_contest block which is weird since these fields are not available in the Contest model.
I think it has to do with my "has_many :contests, through: :submissions" relation? How do I fix this?
Error
ActiveRecord::RecordInvalid: Validation failed: Reps can't be blank, Weight can't be blank
/home/christoph/Documenten/kratos/lib/tasks/populate.rake:62:in `block (2 levels) in make_contests'
/home/christoph/Documenten/kratos/lib/tasks/populate.rake:62:in `block in make_contests'
/home/christoph/Documenten/kratos/lib/tasks/populate.rake:58:in `times'
/home/christoph/Documenten/kratos/lib/tasks/populate.rake:58:in `make_contests'
/home/christoph/Documenten/kratos/lib/tasks/populate.rake:15:in `block (2 levels) in <top (required)>'
Tasks: TOP => db:pcontests
Does anybody knows what could be the reason?
rake task
def make_users
User.create!(
firstname: "Christoph",
name: "Geypen",
username: "chris88",
bio: "He is the best!",
email: "test#test.be",
password: "testtest",
password_confirmation: "testtest"
)
15.times do |n|
firstname = Faker::Name.first_name
name = Faker::Name.last_name
username = Faker::Internet.user_name
bio = Faker::Lorem.sentence
email = "example-#{n+1}#railstutorial.org"
password = "longpassword"
User.create!(
firstname: firstname,
name: name,
username: username,
bio: bio,
email: email,
password: password,
password_confirmation: password,
data_source: "rake_populate"
)
end
end
def make_contests
users = User.all.limit(5)
10.times do
name = Faker::Team.creature
description = Faker::Lorem.sentence
users.each { |user| user.contests.create!(
name: name,
description: description,
admin_id: user.id,
ctype_id: 1,
data_source: "rake_populate"
) }
end
end
def make_submissions
users = User.all.limit(15)
contests = Contest.where(data_source: "rake_populate")
contests.each do |contest|
users.each do |user|
contest.submissions.create!(
reps: rand(1..20),
weight: rand(100..350),
user_id: user.id,
contest_id: contest.id,
data_source: "rake_populate"
)
end
end
end
model validations
contest
class Contest < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :submissions
has_many :users, through: :submissions
belongs_to :admin, class_name: 'User', foreign_key: 'admin_id'
belongs_to :ctype
validates_presence_of :name, :admin_id, :ctype_id
submission
class Submission < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :user
belongs_to :contest
validates_presence_of :user_id, :reps, :weight
validates_uniqueness_of :tonnage, scope: [:user_id, :contest_id]
before_validation :calculate_tonnage
# model helpers
def calculate_tonnage
self.tonnage = self.weight * self.reps if weight && reps
end
user
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
# Include default devise modules. Others available are:
# :confirmable, :lockable, :timeoutable and :omniauthable
devise :database_authenticatable, :registerable,
:recoverable, :rememberable, :trackable, :validatable
devise :omniauthable, omniauth_providers: [:facebook]
has_many :submissions
has_many :contests, through: :submissions
has_one :contest
My create action in the controller looks as following. I am just trying to recreate this using the rake task.
def create
#contest = current_user.contests.new(contest_params)
#contest.admin_id = current_user.id
#contest.save
redirect_to contest_submissions_path(#contest)
end

Answer 1

I fixed it by replacing the create with new and saving afterwards. The following question is WHY does that work and create does not?
def make_contests
users = User.all.limit(5)
10.times do
name = Faker::Team.creature
description = Faker::Lorem.sentence
users.each do |user|
x = user.contests.new(
name: name,
description: description,
admin_id: user.id,
ctype_id: 1,
data_source: "rake_populate")
x.save
end
end
end
UPDATE
aannnnddd problem solved
So create instantiates the new object, validates it, and then saves it to the database. And new only creates the local object but does not attempt to validate or save it to the DB.
https://stackoverflow.com/a/2472416/2785289