ActiveRecord to_i method removed in Rails 3.2.9

Question

Upgraded to Rails 3.2.9 today from 3.2.7 and it appears that the method "to_i" has been removed from ActiveRecord. Is this by design? Or is it a bug? I cannot find any mention of it in the change notes. This is going to impact a lot of code. thanks!

Accepted Answer

The `#to_i` method never existed, however the way assigning objects to values has changed in Rails 3.2.8.

Given the following:

```
class Lecture < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_one :professor
end
```

Previously you could assign a professor to a lecture like this:

```
@lecture.professor = Professor.find_by_id(1)
```

Or like this:

```
@lecture.professor_id = Professor.find_by_id(1)
```

In the first case everything is simple as the `professor` association expects a professor object. In the second case though ActiveRecord performed some magic to coerce the id from the professor, as `professor_id` expects a integer instead.

In Rails 3.2.8 and above that magic no longer works. It is nice in a way as it is a hint you are probably doing something wrong. For example, if there isn't a `professor_id` column in the database, but just `professor` which expects an integer, assigning like this will no longer work.

It looks like this will be reverted to the previous behaviour in Rails 3.2.11.

ActiveRecord to_i method removed in Rails 3.2.9

Solution

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