Why does my rails rollback when I try to user.save?

Question

I have installed the RailsTutorial sample app(the twitter like application) and am trying to understand why the following piece of console code does not update the database when I try updating the user db. I am expecting the user information to get updated once I use the user.save. However, this rolls back to unedited data. Is this due to a user based restriction?

Users controller:

class UsersController < ApplicationController

#before_filter :signed_in_user, only: [:index, :edit, :update, :destroy, :following, :followers]
# By default before filters apply to all actions
#before_filter :correct_user, only: [:edit, :update]
  def edit
    @user = User.find(params[:id])
  end

  def update

    @user = User.find params[:id]

    respond_to do |format|

    if @user.update_attributes(params[:user])
      flash[:notice] = "Profile updated"
      format.html { redirect_to(@user, :notice => 'User was successfully updated.') }
      format.json { respond_with_bip(@user) }
    else

      format.html { render :action => "edit" }
      format.json { respond_with_bip(@user) }
    end
    end
 end

  private


  def correct_user
    @user = User.find(params[:id])
    redirect_to(root_path) unless current_user?(@user)
  end

  def admin_user
    redirect_to(root_path) unless current_user.admin?
  end


end

Rails console:

1.9.3-p392 :001 > user = User.find(109)


User Load (8.2ms)  SELECT "users".* FROM "users" WHERE "users"."id" = ? LIMIT 1  [["id", 109]]
 => #<User id: 109, name: "laurie", email: "[email protected]", created_at: "2013-09-26 18:10:12", updated_at: "2013-09-26 18:10:12", password_digest: "$2a$10$aXEtun8Z2Deqy2wNxvFRNOjPczKQkYc1vDezP5OduJuF...", remember_token: "YhIUhgFm9iMewxdNOHJ45A", admin: false> 

1.9.3-p392 :002 > user.name = "larry"
 => "larry" 

1.9.3-p392 :003 > user.save
   (0.2ms)  begin transaction
  User Exists (0.6ms)  SELECT 1 AS one FROM "users" WHERE (LOWER("users"."email") = LOWER('[email protected]') AND "users"."id" != 109) LIMIT 1
   (0.1ms)  rollback transaction
 => false 

User model:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base

# Declaration of public variables   
  attr_accessible :email, :name, :password, :password_confirmation
  has_secure_password
  has_many :microposts, dependent: :destroy
  has_many :relationships, foreign_key: "follower_id", dependent: :destroy
  has_many :followed_users, through: :relationships, source: :followed
  has_many :reverse_relationships, foreign_key: "followed_id", class_name: "Relationship", dependent: :destroy
  has_many :followers, through: :reverse_relationships, source: :follower

  before_save {email.downcase!}
  before_save :create_remember_token

  validates :name, presence: true, length: {maximum: 50}
  VALID_EMAIL_REGEX = /\A[\w+\-.]+@[a-z\d\-.]+\.[a-z]+\z/i
  validates :email, presence: true, format: {with: VALID_EMAIL_REGEX}, uniqueness: {case_sensitive: false}
  validates :password, presence: true, length: {minimum: 6}
  validates :password_confirmation, presence: true
  after_validation {self.errors.messages.delete(:password_digest)}

 private
    def create_remember_token
        self.remember_token = SecureRandom.urlsafe_base64
    end
end

Answer 1

Your user model probably has validations which are not satisfied. Since you've not posted those I'm unable to really solve your question. To make live easier you can debug why your user isn't willing to save.

Try running

user.errors.full_messages

which should give you a hint what's going wrong.