Updating Strong Params Only - ruby-on-rails

Question

First of all, I believe there must be some people, who already asked this question before but I don't know how can I google this problem. So, if it is duplicate I am sorry.
I am working on a social media site. I have user model, which I use to register users to the site. It validates, name, email, and password when registering.
I use the same model to make users edit their informations, like username.
This is what I have in my update controller:
def update
# Find an existing object using form parameters
#profile = User.find_by_id(current_user.id)
# Update the object
if #profile.update_attributes!(settings_profile_params)
# If save succeeds, redirect to itself
redirect_to request.referrer
else
# If save fails, redisplay the form so user can fix the problems
render('edit')
end
end
private # user_params is not an action, that is why it is private.
def settings_profile_params
params.require(:user).permit(:first_name, :last_name, :username, :school, :program, :website, :information)
end
The problem is, I only want to update strong parameters that I defined there. But I am getting an exception because of password validation. I don't know why am I getting this exception. How can I set up system to update the values in strong parameter only.
Thank you.

Answer 1

You can achieve this by changing you password validation. You need to add a condition on password validation.
# Password
validates :password,
:presence => {:message => 'Password cannot be blank'},
:length => {:within => 8..99, :message => 'Password length should be within 8 and 99 characters'}
:if => Proc.new { new_record? || !password.nil? }

Answer 2

By calling update_attributes you are implicitly invoking the same range of validations as an other update and save. You need to update on the specific params you're targeting (e.g. omitting :password).
Here, we can store that list of permitted keys in a variable that is reusable. Then we call update_attribute on each of those keys — doing so within a reduce that gives the same true/false for the switch to edit or display.
def update
# Find an existing object using form parameters
#profile = User.find_by_id(current_user.id)
# Update the object
if PERMITTED_KEYS.reduce(true) {|bool, key| bool &&= #profile.update_attribute(key, #profile.send(key)) }
# If save succeeds, redirect to itself
redirect_to request.referrer
else
# If save fails, redisplay the form so user can fix the problems
render('edit')
end
end
private
PERMITTED_KEYS = [:first_name, :last_name, :username, :school, :program, :website, :information]
# user_params is not an action, that is why it is private.
def settings_profile_params
params.require(:user).permit(PERMITTED_KEYS)
end
Having not used strong_parameters gem before, I think this would be more idiomatic to the use of the gem:
def update
# Find an existing object using form parameters
#profile = User.find_by_id(current_user.id)
# Update the object
if settings_profile_params.keys.reduce(true) {|bool, key| bool &&= #profile.update_attribute(key, #profile.send(key)) }
# If save succeeds, redirect to itself
redirect_to request.referrer
else
# If save fails, redisplay the form so user can fix the problems
render('edit')
end
end
private
# user_params is not an action, that is why it is private.
def settings_profile_params
params.require(:user).permit(
:first_name, :last_name, :username,
:school, :program,
:website, :information
)
end
Though, I still think this is a duplicate question, since it regard how to update model data without all of the defined validation. I've answered in case the update_attributes loop is felt to be a sufficiently unique solution to warrant non-duplication.

Answer 3

Okay, now I found the problem. First of all, #Muntasim figured out a way to solve this problem. But I actually don't need to use this solution, because there is another easy way to fix this.
In this situation, when I let users to update their profiles, rails should not validate my password or any other column in user model, if I don't ask it to. But why was it validating? Because I have validates :password in user model. Instead it has to be validates :digest_password. Because I am using bcrypt.
I don't know why :password was working fine when I register even though I used bcrypt.