Example with wicked gem on create?

account.rb

class Account < ActiveRecord::Base

  devise :database_autheticatable, :registerable, :recoverable, :rememberable, :trackable, :validatable

  has_one :username
  has_one :subscription

  attr_accessible :email, :password, :password_confirmation, :remember_me, :full_name, :address_1, :address_2, :city, :state_province, :postal_code, :country

end

AccountController.rb

class AccountController < Wicked::WizardController

  steps :start, :info, :address, :billing, :review

  def show

  end

end

subscription.rb

class Subscription < ActiveRecord::Base

  belongs_to :plan
  belongs_to: :account

end

username.rb

class UserName < ActiveRecord::Base

  belongs_to :account
  accepts_nested_attributes_for :account

end

In this case, I don't want to create the account until I get all information, starting with the username (step :start), account information (steps :info and :address) and subscription information (step :billing).

So we need to store the data the user is input, but either keep a record that this is incomplete data in the system, or not save incomplete data.

Option 1

You could add a status field to your table then have a status of 'pending' and you can change all your validations to only run :if => pending? You can then have a sweeper that goes back and deletes all pending accounts that haven't been finalized for over 6 hours etc. This lets you save all of your data in the table, apply any column specific validations, and gives you full control over the process

Option 2

You can store all the values you need either in another table or in the session, or a data store such as redis/memecache/etc., though if you do this...you don't get any validations on your data. You then wait till the last step to actually save the data to the table.

It is much easier and much cleaner to store the data in the correct table, but with some kind of status/flag field to indicate that the account is not complete. I would recommend option 1.

I like the pending idea. thanks!

happy to help !

^_^