Rails, dirty objects causing rollbacks - ruby-on-rails

Question

I have the following:
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
before_update :guest_upgrade
def guest_upgrade
# If the user changed their email that means they were a guest, and are no longer.
# Likely triggered from the Registrations#Update controller
if self.email_changed?
self.guest = false
end
end
This is causing rollbacks, here is the log with the above in play:
Started POST "/users" for 127.0.0.1 at 2011-07-18 14:54:00 -0700
Processing by RegistrationsController#update as HTML
Parameters: {"utf8"=>"✓", "authenticity_token"=>"x+u1DSDanU2QXK/q0=", "user"=>{"fname"=>"xxxxx", "lname"=>"xxxx", "email"=>"xxxxxxx#gmail.com", "password"=>"[FILTERED]", "remember_me"=>"1"}, "commit"=>"Create my account", "fb_access_token"=>"", "fb_uuid"=>""}
User Load (0.6ms) SELECT "users".* FROM "users" WHERE "users"."id" = 5 LIMIT 1
CACHE (0.0ms) SELECT "users".* FROM "users" WHERE "users"."id" = 5 LIMIT 1
SQL (0.1ms) BEGIN
User Load (0.5ms) SELECT "users"."id" FROM "users" WHERE ("users"."email" = 'xxxxxxx#gmail.com') AND ("users".id <> 5) LIMIT 1
SQL (0.2ms) ROLLBACK
Authentication Load (0.5ms) SELECT "authentications".* FROM "authentications" WHERE "authentications"."provider" = 'facebook' AND ("authentications".user_id = 5) LIMIT 1
Rendered layouts/_header.html.erb (3.9ms)
CACHE (0.0ms) SELECT "authentications".* FROM "authentications" WHERE "authentications"."provider" = 'facebook' AND ("authentications".user_id = 5) LIMIT 1
Rendered registrations/edit.html.erb within layouts/application (107.0ms)
Completed 200 OK in 484ms (Views: 111.7ms | ActiveRecord: 6.0ms)
Yet if I comment out the guest_upgrade it works fine:
Started POST "/users" for 127.0.0.1 at 2011-07-18 14:55:23 -0700
Processing by RegistrationsController#update as HTML
Parameters: {"utf8"=>"✓", "authenticity_token"=>"xxxxx+u1DSDanU2QXK/q0=", "user"=>{"fname"=>"XXXX", "lname"=>"XXXX", "email"=>"xxxx#gmail.com"}, "commit"=>"Save Changes"}
User Load (1.0ms) SELECT "users".* FROM "users" WHERE "users"."id" = 5 LIMIT 1
CACHE (0.0ms) SELECT "users".* FROM "users" WHERE "users"."id" = 5 LIMIT 1
SQL (0.1ms) BEGIN
User Load (0.4ms) SELECT "users"."id" FROM "users" WHERE ("users"."email" = 'xxxx#gmail.com') AND ("users".id <> 5) LIMIT 1
AREL (0.7ms) UPDATE "users" SET "fname" = 'XXXX', "lname" = 'XXXX', "email" = 'xxxx#gmail.com', "updated_at" = '2011-07-18 21:55:23.817142' WHERE "users"."id" = 5
[paperclip] Saving attachments.
SQL (37.9ms) COMMIT
Redirected to http://localhost:3000/
Completed 302 Found in 780ms
Am I using the dirty objects incorrectly?
All I want to do is, when User is updated, if the user changes there email, change the user.guest field to false.
Suggestions? Thanks

Answer 1

I think I've had this problem before. I believe what's happening is it's returning false; try adding an explicit return like so:
if self.email_changed?
self.guest = false
return true
end
Check out the section marked Canceling Callbacks at ruby on rails.org api. It reads:
Canceling callbacks
If a before_* callback returns false, all the later callbacks and the
associated action are cancelled. If an after_* callback returns false,
all the later callbacks are cancelled. Callbacks are generally run in
the order they are defined, with the exception of callbacks defined as
methods on the model, which are called last.
I know I'm late but I hope this helps!