From: Sven Schott <sven_schott@...>
Date: 2005-01-05T13:14:00+09:00
Subject: Rails question: changing individual attribute data

Hi

I've started the tutorials on rails and I've really enjoyed it so far. 
However, I have hit a bit of a snag. I've looked through the tutorials 
and the API but I couldn't figure out how to do it.

I'm writing an application to store information on system 
specifications. One of the things I would like it to do, is to not 
delete records but instead 'unlink' them(set the id to 0). I know the 
attributes method allows you to replace all the values but I only want 
to replace the id value. I messed around with it until I didn't get an 
error but I still can't get it to work. Help! Help! Any ideas, 
suggestion, criticisms, abuse; hell, I'll take anything useful at this 
point.

Here's the code I have so far:



  def destroy
	@system = System.find(@params["id"])
	@system.id = 0
	@system.save
	
	redirect_to :action => "list"
   end

I don't know if this code does anything useful. :)

I am running ruby 1.9.0 (2004-03-09) [powerpc-darwin] on MacOS 10.3.7 
on a Powerbook G4.  Rails is installed via gem:

actionmailer (0.4.0)
     Service layer for easy email delivery and testing.

actionpack (0.9.5)
     Web-flow and rendering framework putting the VC in MVC.

activerecord (1.1.0)
     Implements the ActiveRecord pattern for ORM.

rails (0.8.5)
     Web-application framework with template engine, control-flow layer,
     and ORM.

rake (0.4.12, 0.4.11)
     Ruby based make-like utility.

sources (0.0.1)
     This package provides download sources for remote gem installation


The views are the standard tutorial views. They work fine until I try 
the code above.

Also, is there a rails book in the works? I would really, really like 
one. I would pay exorbitant amounts of money for it.

Much obliged,


Sven Schott

P.S. Thank you very much to the fine gentleman who wrote rails. Once I 
get the hang of it, I will throw Filemaker out the window.