Rails + Devise Nested Registration form undefined method 'build_address' - ruby-on-rails

Question

Hi this question is basically the same as this one, which had no responses. I'm trying to combine the Devise registration form to include fields that produce not only a "user", but a "customer" object, an "account" object for that customer, and an "address" for that customer.
When visitor clicks "Sign Up", the registration form should include the standard Devise stuff, but also the fields for the creation of the other objects. Instead, I get this error:
NoMethodError in Registrations#new
undefined method `build_address' for #
Extracted source (around line #6):
<div class="panel panel-default" style="width: 14em;">
<% resource.build_customer if resource.customer.nil? %>
<% resource.build_account if resource.accounts.nil? %>
<% resource.build_address if resource.address.nil? %>
<%= form_for(resource, as: resource_name, url: >registration_path(resource_name)) do |f| %>
<%= devise_error_messages! %>
<h3>User Info</h3>
Rather than explaining all the relationships, here are the models:
user.rb
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
before_create :generate_id
# Virtual attribute for authenticating by either username or email
# This is in addition to a real persisted field like 'username'
attr_accessor :login
has_one :administrator
has_one :customer
has_many :accounts, through: :customer
accepts_nested_attributes_for :customer, :allow_destroy => true
accepts_nested_attributes_for :accounts, :allow_destroy => true
has_one :address, through: :customer
accepts_nested_attributes_for :customer, :allow_destroy => true
accepts_nested_attributes_for :address, :allow_destroy => true
validates_uniqueness_of :email, :case_sensitive => false
validates_uniqueness_of :id
validates :username,
:presence => true,
:uniqueness=> {
:case_sensitive => false
}
# User ID is a generated uuid
include ActiveUUID::UUID
natural_key :user_id, :remember_created_at
belongs_to :user
# specify custom UUID namespace for the natural key
uuid_namespace "1dd74dd0-d116-11e0-99c7-5ac5d975667e"
# Include default devise modules. Others available are:
# :confirmable, :lockable, :timeoutable and :omniauthable
devise :database_authenticatable, :registerable, :timeoutable, :recoverable, :trackable, :validatable
# Generate a random uuid for new user id creation
def generate_id
self.id = SecureRandom.uuid
end
# Allow signin by either email or username ("lower" function might have to be removed?)
def self.find_for_database_authentication(warden_conditions)
conditions = warden_conditions.dup
if login = conditions.delete(:login)
where(conditions.to_h).where(["lower(username) = :value OR lower(email) = :value", { :value => login.downcase }]).first
else
where(conditions.to_h).first
end
end
end
customer.rb
class Customer < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :user
has_one :address
has_many :accounts
validates :phone1, :firstname, :lastname, presence: true
end
account.rb
class Account < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :customer
belongs_to :user
has_one :acct_type
has_many :acct_transactions
validates :acct_type, presence: true
end
address.rb
class Address < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :customer
belongs_to :user
validates :zip_code, presence: true
validates :address1, presence: true
has_one :zip_code
has_one :state, through: :zip_code
end
The two controllers in question:
registrations_controller.rb
class RegistrationsController < Devise::RegistrationsController
before_filter :configure_permitted_parameters
# GET /users/sign_up
def new
#user = current_user
#customer = nil ##user.customer
#account = nil ##customer.account
#address = nil ##customer.address
# Override Devise default behavior and create a customer, account, and address as well
build_resource({})
resource.build_customer
respond_with self.resource
build_resource({})
resource.build_account
respond_with self.resource
build_resource({})
resource.build_address
respond_with self.resource
end
protected
def configure_permitted_parameters
devise_parameter_sanitizer.for(:sign_up) { |u|
.permit(:username, :email, :password, :password_confirmation,
:customer_attributes => [:phone1, :phone2, :title, :firstname, :lastname],
:account_attributes => :acct_type,
:address_attributes => [:address1, :address2, :zip_code])
}
end
end
addresses_controller.rb (The important parts)
def new
#customer = current_user.customer
#address = #customer.address.build(:customer_id => #customer.id,
:address1 => nil,
:address2 => nil,
:zip_code => nil)
end
def create
#customer = current_user.customer
#address = #customer.address.build(:customer_id => #customer.id,
:address1 => nil,
:address2 => nil,
:zip_code => nil)
respond_to do |format|
if #address.save
format.html { redirect_to #address, notice: 'Address was successfully created.' }
format.json { render :show, status: :created, location: #address }
else
format.html { render :new }
format.json { render json: #address.errors, status: :unprocessable_entity }
end
end
end
And here is the view where the exception is raised (It's really long so actually the important parts):
<h1>Create an account</h1>
<div class="form-group">
<div class="panel panel-default" style="width: 14em;">
<% resource.build_customer if resource.customer.nil? %>
<% resource.build_account if resource.accounts.nil? %>
<% resource.build_address if resource.address.nil? %>
<%= form_for(resource, as: resource_name, url: registration_path(resource_name)) do |f| %>
<%= devise_error_messages! %>
<h3>User Info</h3>
<div class="form-group">
<!-- fields for User object -->
<div class="field">
<%= f.label :username %><br />
<%= f.text_field :username, autofocus: true %>
</div>
...
<!-- fields for Customer object -->
<%= f.fields_for :customer do |customer_fields| %>
<div class="field">
<%= customer_fields.label :firstname %>
<%= customer_fields.text_field :firstname %>
</div>
...
<!-- fields for Account object -->
<%= f.fields_for :account do |account_fields| %>
<div class="field">
<%= account_fields.label :acct_type %>
<%= account_fields.text_field :acct_type %>
</div>
<% end %>
<!-- fields for Address object -->
<%= f.fields_for :address do |address_fields| %>
<div class="field">
<%= address_fields.label :address1 %>
<%= address_fields.text_field :address1 %>
</div>
...
The exception is pointing to the block of statements at the top...
<% resource.build_customer if resource.customer.nil? %>
<% resource.build_account if resource.accounts.nil? %>
<% resource.build_address if resource.address.nil? %>
... which has given me trouble before. Before the current error I was getting a similar error from the second line ("build_account"). But that turned out to be a pluralization issue, which I believe I've fixed. Since the HTML is read sequentially, it would seem that there is no problem with the first two build_ methods. Why is there then a problem with the build_address method?
I need to fix this error before I can know if the whole thing will actually work or not. Any ideas?
Thanks
It's Rails 4.1.8 / Devise 3.4.1

Answer 1

The trouble turned out to be the syntax I was using create multiple resource objects. It would pass one, but ignored the rest. What I ended up doing to make it work (or at least make the error go away) was to override the build_resource method to accept an array of parameters for each object to be instantiated:
def new
#user = current_user
build_resource({})
self.resource[:customer => Customer.new, :account => Account.new, :address => Address.new]
respond_with self.resource
end
def build_resource(hash=nil)
hash ||= params[resource_name] || {}
self.resource = resource_class.new(hash)
end
def create
# Override Devise default behavior and create a customer, account, and address as well
resource = build_resource(params[:user])
if(resource.save)
sign_in(resource_name, resource)
respond_with resource, :location => after_sign_up_path_for(resource)
else
render :action => "new"
end
end
Also, I removed the three lines at the top of the form view as they attempted to do some sort of pre-validation in the view and just caused problems. Plenty of validation will happen when the form is submitted. This seems to be doing something good. Now I'm working with the form view and having trouble getting each part to render. Fields_for is rendering fields for User and Account models, but not Customer or Address.