I’m learning Ecto, and having issues trying to update following the docs. In my repo User has_many UserOrganisations, and there’s boolean called home on UserOrganisations. I’m attempting to set them all to false.
First: I load my user.
user = Repo.get!(User, 1) |> Repo.preload(:user_organisations)
Looking at the docs it really looks like I should be able to do:
user_orgs = Enum.map(user.user_organisations, &(put_in(&1.home, false)))
(this correctly returns the updated structs with home set to false)
However, performing the following makes no changes.
user |> change() |> put_assoc(:user_organisations, user_orgs) |> Repo.update()
If instead I create the orgs by explicitly wrapping them in a changeset
user_orgs = Enum.map(user.user_organisations, &(change(&1, %{home: false})))
Then the changes are made.
I’m assuming I’m misunderstanding something here, but, on the off-chance that the docs are wrong I thought I’d double check. I also tried using update_in
like in the docs, but, that didn’t work either.
according to Ecto.Changeset — Ecto v3.11.2 it says (when you’re passing structs)
Different to passing changesets, structs are not change tracked in any fashion. In other words, if you change a comment struct and give it to put_assoc/4, the updates in the struct won't be persisted. You must use changesets instead.
So, I guess that’s why my first approach is falling over, but, isn’t that what the docs are doing?
I’m not sure I understand what your problem with the docs is? They’re clearly stating a caveat.
The first doc I linked to is titled updating-all-associated-records-using-internal-data
→ Associations — Ecto v3.11.2 and has this example:
movie =
Repo.get_by!(Movie, title: "The Shawshank Redemption")
|> Repo.preload(:characters)
IO.inspect(movie.characters)
#=> [%{name: "Andy Dufresne", age: 50},
#=> %{name: "Red", age: 60}]
characters =
Enum.map(characters, fn character ->
update_in(character.age, &(&1 + 1)))
end)
{:ok, movie} =
movie
|> change()
|> put_assoc(:characters, characters)
|> Repo.update()
movie.characters |> Enum.map(&(&1.age)) |> IO.inspect
#=> [51, 61]
In that example (which I was trying to follow) it really looks like they’re using a schema and getting back the characters
and then using update_in
to change the map and then passing it to Repo.update()
. Nowhere on that page do they say “structs are not change tracked in any fashion”, and, I guess I just don’t see how the example on that page is supposed to work at all :). Probably I’m just missing something - I’m very new to all this!. Thanks for the response.
Ah, I see.
Also, your last “code” line is your comment and it’s really long and hard to read. Take it out of the coding block? 
Docs can be incorrect as well – in this case the cheatsheet seems incorrect. You can report such issues on the ecto repo.
1 Like