Re: [Rails] Update model without primary key

On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 9:30 AM, Michael Pavling <pavling@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 28 November 2011 02:27, Seb <sebastianthegreatful@gmail.com> wrote:
>> The phone model consists of id, name, version, imei, etc. id is the primary
>> key as by the rails standard.
>> imei is unique but not the primary key. when I update the model from the
>> android app I dont have the id, only the imei number.
>> The way I see it I have 3 options.
>> 1. create an action called update_version, do a find_by_imei and update my
>> model. This is actually what I do now but this isnt very restful or pretty
>
> Why is this not pretty or RESTful? Is that because you're doing it in
> the same controller as your "normal" updates that have id?

Yes, and just because I did it in a odd way... I'm new to rails.

> If so, have a separate controller for the mobile app to access by
> IMEI, and mixin any functionality that's shared (or subclass and
> overload the population of @phone depending on whether it's .find or
> .find_by_imei)
>
>> 2. During create assign imei to phone.id... I like this solution for it's
>> simplicity, but I cant get it to work (for reasons I'll explain if
>> requested)
>
> As suggested by Norbert, it would be easier to make the IMEI field the
> primary key.
>

Yeah, and right now I'm leaning towards that way.

>> 3. make two requests to the server. 1. where I do a find_by_imei and return
>> the id 2. update normally
>
> This might be easiest... but I'd be keen to see the controller code
> you're using at the moment, because I assume you're doing something
> like this:
>   @phone = Phone.find(params[:id])
>
> and you *might* be able to change that to :
>   @phone = Phone.find_by_id(params[:id]) || Phone.find_by_imei(params[:imei])
>
> (or DRY it up to a method:
>   @phone = find_phone_from_params
>
>  private
>  def find_phone_from_params
>    Phone.find_by_id(params[:id]) || Phone.find_by_imei(params[:imei])
>  end
> )
>

The problem with this is that the update action is invoked by posting
to /phones/id. And I dont have that id when posting.
If i simply post to /phones the create method will be invoked, right?

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