Cannot selectively update attributes on a model

[sachinsiby]

Because Inform defaults the attributes to nil, we are unable to selectively update attributes. i.e. you must pass in all of the attributes on the model.

e.g.

class PersonForm
  include Inflorm
  attribute :name 
  attribute :age
  attribute :gender
end

PersonForm.new(age: 27).to_h #=> {name: nil, age: 27, gender: nil}

So when you do a Person#update_attributes in your #persist! method, it overwrites the existing name and gender attributes to null. This is problematic, especially if you have non-null constraints on your database.

[bradrobertson]

What's the use-case? I don't think inflorm is really required if you're just updating one attribute.

Having said that I've been thinking about this from a patch perspective also, and I think it makes sense to be able to selectively update attributes. The only thing is that inflorm doesn't directly map to a single model. The whole point of it is to define your pubic API and validations completely separately from the models, so I'm wondering how you'd actually do this.

Is this a blocker?

[sachinsiby]

The use case is for when you have a <form> that does not include fields for all of the attributes.

Maybe the solution for this is to have a separate Inflorm class for this slimmed-down form? Though this seems a little like it'd be extra overhead…

[bradrobertson]

Ya I know the general use case, I was wondering if there's something specific in our app requiring it. For now I'd suggest ya that we have specific endpoints for one-off modifications (ie 'publish/unpublish') that could use slimmed down forms