Issues with Rails built-in cache counter

[seivan]

belongs_to :order, :counter_cache => :contributors_count

contributors_count is null in the response, but 1 in the model
Next request. It's 1 in the response and 2 in the model.

I've resorted to callbacks for this for now. But really like this out of the box.

Basically the attribute isn't set when the response is sent.

[fabrik42]

Hey :)

I am able to reproduce you problem, but this is not a problem of acts_as_api but of the Rails counter_cache implementation.

The same behaviour appears when you use the common rendering methods of Rails:

class ItemsController < ApplicationController

  def create
    @user = User.find(params[:user_id])
    @item = @user.items.build(params[:item])

    respond_to do |format|
      if @item.save
        format.xml  { render :xml => @user, :status => :created }
      else
        format.xml  { render :xml => @item.errors, :status => :unprocessable_entity }
      end
    end        
  end

end

I think the problem is that @item.save will modify the user model in the after_create callback but ActiveRecord won't know its instances of the user are dirty now (@user.changed? returns false). If you reload the @user instance in the case above, it will show the correct count.

[fabrik42]

Closing this for now.