Can't mass assign protected attributes

Question

I'm creating seed data for one of my tables and whenever I run rake db:seed it gives me the error:

Can't mass-assign protected attributes: severity

My two models look like

class Status < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :severity
  attr_accessible :description, :image, :name, :slug, :severity_id
end

and

class Severity < ActiveRecord::Base
  attr_accessible :name, :val, :severity_id
end

the data I'm trying to seed with is

statuses = Status.create(
  [
    {
      "name"=> 'Normal', 
      "slug"=> 'normal', 
      "description"=> 'The service is up or was up during this entire period', 
      "severity"=> 1,
      "image"=> 'tick-circle'
    }
  ]
)

Why does this happen?

Answer 1

You need to add :severity to the Severity model on the attr_accesible line . Rails is trying to assign an attribute by that name which I assume you have in your database.

Answer 2

attr_accessible :severity

Section 6: Mass Assignment http://guides.rubyonrails.org/security.html

Answer 3

Your seed says severity, but your accessor says severity_id. So which one is it?