How to implement a Counter Cache in Rails?

Question

I have a posts controller and a comments controller. Post has many comments, and comments belong to Post. The associate is set up with the counter_cache option turned on as such:

#Inside post.rb
has_many :comments

#Inside comment.rb
belongs_to :post, :counter_cache => true

I have a comments_count column in my posts table that is defaulted to zero, as such:

add_column :posts, :comments_count, :integer, :default => 0

In the create action of my comments controller, I have the following code:

def create
  @posts = Post.find(params[:post_id])
  @comment = @post.comments.build(params[:comment])
  if @comment.save
    redirect_to root
  else
    render :action => 'new'
  end
end

My problem: when @comment.save is called, I get the following error:

ArgumentError in CommentsController#create

wrong number of arguments (2 for 0)

Removing :counter_cache => true from comment.rb completely solves the problem, so I'm assuming that it is the cause of this vague error. What am I missing here? How can I save my comment and still have rails take care of my counter_cache for my post?

Thanks!

---

Update - Application trace attached:

/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.8/lib/active_record/base.rb:987:in `update_all'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.8/lib/active_record/base.rb:987:in `update_counters_without_lock'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.8/lib/active_record/locking/optimistic.rb:176:in `update_counters'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.8/lib/active_record/base.rb:1006:in `increment_counter'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.8/lib/active_record/associations.rb:1367:in `belongs_to_counter_cache_after_create_for_feed_entry'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.3.8/lib/active_support/callbacks.rb:178:in `send'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.3.8/lib/active_support/callbacks.rb:178:in `evaluate_method'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.3.8/lib/active_support/callbacks.rb:166:in `call'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.3.8/lib/active_support/callbacks.rb:93:in `run'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.3.8/lib/active_support/callbacks.rb:92:in `each'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.3.8/lib/active_support/callbacks.rb:92:in `send'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.3.8/lib/active_support/callbacks.rb:92:in `run'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.3.8/lib/active_support/callbacks.rb:276:in `run_callbacks'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.8/lib/active_record/callbacks.rb:344:in `callback'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.8/lib/active_record/callbacks.rb:267:in `create'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.8/lib/active_record/base.rb:2915:in `create_or_update_without_callbacks'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.8/lib/active_record/callbacks.rb:250:in `create_or_update'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.8/lib/active_record/base.rb:2573:in `save_without_validation'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.8/lib/active_record/validations.rb:1090:in `save_without_dirty'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.8/lib/active_record/dirty.rb:79:in `save_without_transactions'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.8/lib/active_record/transactions.rb:229:in `send'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.8/lib/active_record/transactions.rb:229:in `with_transaction_returning_status'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.8/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/database_statements.rb:136:in `transaction'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.8/lib/active_record/transactions.rb:182:in `transaction'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.8/lib/active_record/transactions.rb:228:in `with_transaction_returning_status'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.8/lib/active_record/transactions.rb:196:in `save'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.8/lib/active_record/transactions.rb:208:in `rollback_active_record_state!'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.8/lib/active_record/transactions.rb:196:in `save'
/Users/yuval/Sites/rails/blog/app/controllers/comments_controller.rb:6:in `create'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.3.8/lib/action_controller/base.rb:1331:in `send'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.3.8/lib/action_controller/base.rb:1331:in `perform_action_without_filters'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.3.8/lib/action_controller/filters.rb:617:in `call_filters'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.3.8/lib/action_controller/filters.rb:610:in `perform_action_without_benchmark'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.3.8/lib/action_controller/benchmarking.rb:68:in `perform_action_without_rescue'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.3.8/lib/active_support/core_ext/benchmark.rb:17:in `ms'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.3.8/lib/active_support/core_ext/benchmark.rb:17:in `ms'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.3.8/lib/action_controller/benchmarking.rb:68:in `perform_action_without_rescue'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.3.8/lib/action_controller/rescue.rb:160:in `perform_action_without_flash'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.3.8/lib/action_controller/flash.rb:151:in `perform_action'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.3.8/lib/action_controller/base.rb:532:in `send'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.3.8/lib/action_controller/base.rb:532:in `process_without_filters'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.3.8/lib/action_controller/filters.rb:606:in `process'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.3.8/lib/action_controller/base.rb:391:in `process'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.3.8/lib/action_controller/base.rb:386:in `call'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.3.8/lib/action_controller/routing/route_set.rb:438:in `call'

Notice the only line that doesn't have to do directly with the Rails framework is:

/Users/yuval/Sites/rails/blog/app/controllers/comments_controller.rb:6:in `create'

Line 6 is the following:

if @comment.save

---

EDIT 2: the @posts/@post is a typo on my end when writing a simplified example for StackOverflow, my actual application doesn't have mistake.

Inspecting @comment, it seems to be completely valid - it returns back exactly what I expect it to - a new instance of comment with whatever information I passed to it with build. It only blows up when the save method is called on it.

Thank you for all the suggestions so far. Any other ideas?

Fibrin

Can you post at least part of application trace? It will be helpful to see where error actually occurs (i.e. which method is called with 2 arguments instead of 0). – Advocation

updated. looks like it's the save method... – Fibrin

In your backtrace, there are indication about a Feed model. It's not with it. the problem ? /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.8/lib/active_record/associations.rb:1367:in belongs_to_counter_cache_after_create_for_feed_entry'` – Sharice

updated to reflect the comments/suggestions. – Fibrin

So this is no longer a bounty question? – Ungula

Thank you for all the effort so far. It looks like the bounty on it ended... but I still didn't get an answer... – Fibrin

I recently discovered the gem counter_culture and added it to my project. It works good as far as I can tell. – Chide

Answer 1

I ran through a sample rails app with your code and it all worked fine for me.

I would suggest debugging a little more like hurikhan77 is suggesting and see if it is just the @posts / @post issue that dain suggested.

Also, try creating a post and a comment in the console with some very simple content to see if it is working.

$ ruby script/console

# add whatever fields are necessary to create     
> @p = Post.create(:title => "TestPost1")
  # => #<Post id: 3, ...

# again, add whatever is necessary to create
> @c = @p.comments.create(:comment => "TestComment1")
  # => #<Comment id: 8, ...

> Post.find(:last).comments_count
  # => 1

See what that gets you.

/ JP

Ungula

Answer 2

This might be completely off the mark, but you use @posts then @post?

Arvad

Answer 3

ArgumentError in CommentsController#create

wrong number of arguments (2 for 0)

You get this error because @comment is not the object you expect. Try to debug this by inserting:

logger.debug @comment.inspect

You'll see something unexpected and it should raise at least an eyebrow. This should be the clou that you assigned the Post.find(...) to @posts but later tried to work with @post.

Biometry