Rails has_one relationship safe resource.build_resource in controller

Question

I have a page that takes a user through a short sign up tutorial when they create their account in order to create their first resource. In my app, :hotel belongs to :user, and :user has_one hotel. For the tutorial page, in my controller, I have:

    @hotel = current_user.build_hotel

Which works, except that it a user somehow finds him back on the tutorial page that command disassociates their previously created hotel. In other words, the second time the user accesses the page with:

 @hotel = current_user.build_hotel

The user_id field in the hotel they created the first time becomes nil. Obviously that is a serious problem. I can do a before_filter on that page, but I'm not very happy about having a way for the user to screw everything up simply by visiting a page. How should I properly use the build command for a has_one relationship?

Answer 1

You can test for the existence of a hotel before building it:

 @hotel = current_user.hotel || current_user.build_hotel