Rails: Paperclip needs attributes defined by attr_accessible, not just attr_accessor

Posted on May 10th, 2011 by Sacha Chua

I wanted to add uploaded files to the survey response model defined by the Surveyor gem. I’d gotten most of the changes right, and the filenames were showing up in the model, but Paperclip wasn’t saving the files to the filesystem. As it turns out, Paperclip requires that your attributes (ex: :file_value> for my file column) be tagged with attr_accessible, not just attr_accessor.

Once you define one attr_accessible item, you need to define all the ones you need, or mass-assigning attributes with update_attributes will fail. This meant adding a whole bunch of attributes to my attr_accessor list, too.

If you’re using accepts_nested_attributes_for, you will also need to use attr_accessible there, too.

Sharing the note here just in case anyone else runs into it. Props to Tam on StackOverflow for the tip!

2011-04-01 Fri 12:41

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Short URL: http://sachachua.com/blog/p/22224

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