<p>The combination of a running nose, scratchy throat, and this <a href="http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveResource/Base.html">ActiveResource</a> bug made for a lovely afternoon.</p> <p>The <a href="http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionView/Helpers/FormHelper.html#M001572">form_for</a> method in ActionView::Helpers::FormHelper, when given an ActiveRecord object as an argument, uses the new_record? method to determine whether the form action should be POST or PUT.&nbsp; Well, today I was building a controller to consume a restful web service, so I was using ActiveResource instead of ActiveRecord.</p> <p>Everything was hunky-dory until I began doing a little testing.</p> <p>Whenever I would submit my 'new' form, it would blow up on a before_filter method.&nbsp; The odd part was that the before_filter method was declared as such...</p> <pre name="code" class="ruby">before_filter :do_stuff, :except =&gt; [:new, :create]</pre> <p>WTF? It should not have been calling the do_stuff method before the 'create' action.&nbsp; Well, as it turns out, it wasn't.&nbsp; A little debugging helped me realize that it was actually hitting the 'update' action.&nbsp; Again, WTF?</p> <p>I checked the form_for method call.&nbsp; I checked the generated html.&nbsp; I checked the routes file.&nbsp; Everything looked kosher.&nbsp; I was stumped.</p> <p>When all else fails, google that shit.</p> <p>I did, and what did I find?&nbsp; <a title="Ruby on Rails - Lighthouse Ticket #1455" href="http://rails.lighthouseapp.com/projects/8994/tickets/1455-activeresource-failed-with-rails-221">This Lighthouse ticket</a> describing how form_for no worky with ActiveResource in Rails 2.2.1 (and 2.2.2 evidently since that what I was running).&nbsp; So what's the solution?</p> <pre name="code" class="ruby">alias :new_record? :new?</pre> <p>Add that to your resource model.&nbsp; ActiveResource defines a new? method which works exactly like ActiveRecord's new_record? method.&nbsp;</p> <p>I had actually checked the new_record? method when I was debugging the issue, but for some reason no bells and whistles went off when @thing.new_record? returned nil.&nbsp; WTF Brent?&nbsp; I blame it on the medication.</p> 2009-03-17T02:04:42Z The combination of a running nose, scratchy throat, and this ActiveResource [http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveResource/Base.html] bug made for 25 true form-for-funkiness-with-activeresource 2009-05-04T04:06:34Z