Cocoon and has_one association

Question

I have searched on stack overflow and google to no avail.

I have a person who has_one next_of_kin

I can create a person with a nested form (with cocoon) and it saves perfectly. For some reason when I then go to the edit page it deletes the associated next_of_kin record. It renders the fields populated with the record's data, but the actual record in the database gets deleted.

My form

.full-width-row
  = simple_form_for @person, url: {action: action}, wrapper: 'two_column_form' do |f|
    .columns.medium-4
      h4 = heading
    .columns.medium-8
      = f.button :submit, 'Save', class: 'right button tiny radius'

    .columns.medium-12
      .row
        .medium-8.columns
          = f.input :first_name
          = f.input :last_name
          = f.input :email
          br

          h6 Next of Kin
          br
          = f.simple_fields_for :next_of_kin do |nok|
            = render 'next_of_kin_fields', f: nok
          .link
            = link_to_add_association "Add Next of Kin", f, :next_of_kin, class: 'button secondary tiny next_of_kin_button'
          hr

My _next_of_kin_fields partial

.nested-fields
  = f.input :first_name
  = f.input :last_name
  = f.input :relationship, as: :select, collection: NextOfKin::RELATIONSHIP
  = f.input :telephone
  = link_to_remove_association "Remove next of kin", f, class: 'remove-association button tiny alert'

My Person model:

class Person < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_one :next_of_kin, dependent: :destroy
  accepts_nested_attributes_for :next_of_kin, allow_destroy: true
end

My Next_of_kin model:

class NextOfKin < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :person
  RELATIONSHIP = [ "Mother", "Father", "Brother", "Sister", "Aunt", "Uncle", "Spouse", "Other"]
end

How do I stop it from deleting the next_of_kin record when I visit the edit page?

Answer 1

set force_non_association_create in link_to_add_association to true to avoid this

= link_to_add_association "Add Next of Kin", f, :next_of_kin, force_non_association_create: true, class: 'button secondary tiny next_of_kin_button'

Cocoon's documentation for this parameter: https://github.com/nathanvda/cocoon#force_non_association_create