class.save error ruby on rails - ruby-on-rails

Question

I'm learning ruby on rails by following Patrick Lenz's book from Sitepoint. I know it's a bit outdated, so I'm adapting as I go along.
I've gotten to a place where I'm in my rails console, ready to start creating/saving to my database, and when I create a class, then type story.save, I get this error:
1.9.3p194 :007 > story.save
(0.1ms) begin transaction
SQL (0.5ms) INSERT INTO "stories" ("link", "name") VALUES (?, ?) [["link", nil], ["name", nil]]
SQLite3::ConstraintException: constraint failed: INSERT INTO "stories" ("link", "name") VALUES (?, ?)
(0.1ms) rollback transaction
ActiveRecord::StatementInvalid: SQLite3::ConstraintException: constraint failed: INSERT INTO "stories" ("link", "name") VALUES (?, ?)
from /Users/ideogram/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/sqlite3-1.3.6/lib/sqlite3/statement.rb:108:in `step'
from /Users/ideogram/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/sqlite3-1.3.6/lib/sqlite3/statement.rb:108:in `block in each'
from /Users/ideogram/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/sqlite3-1.3.6/lib/sqlite3/statement.rb:107:in `loop'
from /Users/ideogram/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/sqlite3-1.3.6/lib/sqlite3/statement.rb:107:in `each'
from /Users/ideogram/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/activerecord-3.2.3/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/sqlite_adapter.rb:263:in `to_a'
from /Users/ideogram/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/activerecord-3.2.3/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/sqlite_adapter.rb:263:in `block in exec_query'
from /Users/ideogram/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/activerecord-3.2.3/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract_adapter.rb:280:in `block in log'
from /Users/ideogram/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/activesupport-3.2.3/lib/active_support/notifications/instrumenter.rb:20:in `instrument'
from /Users/ideogram/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/activerecord-3.2.3/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract_adapter.rb:275:in `log'
from /Users/ideogram/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/activerecord-3.2.3/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/sqlite_adapter.rb:242:in `exec_query'
from /Users/ideogram/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/activerecord-3.2.3/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/database_statements.rb:63:in `exec_insert'
from /Users/ideogram/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/activerecord-3.2.3/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/database_statements.rb:90:in `insert'
from /Users/ideogram/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/activerecord-3.2.3/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/query_cache.rb:14:in `insert'
from /Users/ideogram/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/activerecord-3.2.3/lib/active_record/relation.rb:66:in `insert'
from /Users/ideogram/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/activerecord-3.2.3/lib/active_record/persistence.rb:363:in `create'
from /Users/ideogram/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/activerecord-3.2.3/lib/active_record/timestamp.rb:57:in `create'
... 14 levels...
from /Users/ideogram/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/activerecord-3.2.3/lib/active_record/validations.rb:50:in `save'
from /Users/ideogram/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/activerecord-3.2.3/lib/active_record/attribute_methods/dirty.rb:22:in `save'
from /Users/ideogram/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/activerecord-3.2.3/lib/active_record/transactions.rb:241:in `block (2 levels) in save'
from /Users/ideogram/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/activerecord-3.2.3/lib/active_record/transactions.rb:295:in `block in with_transaction_returning_status'
from /Users/ideogram/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/activerecord-3.2.3/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/database_statements.rb:192:in `transaction'
from /Users/ideogram/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/activerecord-3.2.3/lib/active_record/transactions.rb:208:in `transaction'
from /Users/ideogram/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/activerecord-3.2.3/lib/active_record/transactions.rb:293:in `with_transaction_returning_status'
from /Users/ideogram/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/activerecord-3.2.3/lib/active_record/transactions.rb:241:in `block in save'
from /Users/ideogram/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/activerecord-3.2.3/lib/active_record/transactions.rb:252:in `rollback_active_record_state!'
from /Users/ideogram/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/activerecord-3.2.3/lib/active_record/transactions.rb:240:in `save'
from (irb):7
from /Users/ideogram/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/railties-3.2.3/lib/rails/commands/console.rb:47:in `start'
from /Users/ideogram/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/railties-3.2.3/lib/rails/commands/console.rb:8:in `start'
from /Users/ideogram/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/railties-3.2.3/lib/rails/commands.rb:41:in `<top (required)>'
from script/rails:6:in `require'
from script/rails:6:in `<main>'1.9.3p194 :008 >
I have no idea what this means. Any ideas? Help is much appreciated. :)
I'm running on a Macbook Pro OSX Lion 10.7.3, Ruby 1.9.3-194, Rails 3.2.3. Have installed homebrew, rvm, and then several packages including readlines, sqlite3, and git.
THANK YOU!
Addendum: here is my schema:
ActiveRecord::Schema.define(:version => 0) do
create_table "stories", :force => true do |t|
t.string "name"
t.string "link"
end
add_index "stories", ["id"], :name => "sqlite_autoindex_stories_1", :unique => true
end
This is the sqlite command I used to create my table:
CREATE TABLE `stories` (
`id` int(11) NOT NULL,
`name` varchar(255) default NULL,
`link` varchar(255) default NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
);

Answer 1

Thank you all very much for helping me out.
Between your comments, I figured out the issue. The issue was in my database -- it wasn't created correctly so once I had deleted the original file and then recompiled the file again (making sure all of my commas were in the correct place) then it finally worked!
I appreciate all your help, so thank you again. I learned quite a bit from your answers. :)

Answer 2

Nil values are the problem -- you can change that in the migration if you need to allow nil.
Lots of ways to verify the details from console
> story.valid?
> story.errors (after a save)
etc etc
The migration (or your db/schema.rb) would be helpful as well

Answer 3

stories table are not in your migration. Maybe you created it by hand (sql) with not null contraints. Since Rails have no clue about those constrains, it trows an error from your DB

Answer 4

From the looks of your schema, you don't have a stories table. The Patrick Lenz tutorial uses MySQL as a database but you are using SQLite3. (I was looking at an old article of his. It appears he updated the article in 2011) Since you have a schema file, I'm guessing that you are using migration files to generate your database tables. If so, your link and name fields would default to :null => true and hence would have no qualms about holding a nil value.
Is it possible that you forgot to rake db:migrate after creating the migration file for your stories table?