rails controller not saving value to boolen field in database

Question

I have a model store with a controller. This controller has an action "publish" which sets the store :publish field true or false.

def publish
    @store=Store.find_by(params[:store_id])
    if params[:publish_value]=="1"
        if @store.update_attribute :publish, true
            @message_type="success"
            @message="Your store has been published succesfully."
            respond_to do |format|
                format.js
            end
        else
            @message_type = "error"
            @message = @store.errors.full_messages.join(', ')
            respond_to do |format|
                format.js { render :template => "layouts/messages.js.erb", 
                             :layout => false }
            end
        end
    else
        if @store.update_attribute :publish, false
            @message_type="warning"
            @message="Your store has been unpublished."
            respond_to do |format|
                format.js
            end
        else
            @message_type = "error"
            @message = @store.errors.full_messages.join(', ')
            respond_to do |format|
                format.js { render :template => "layouts/messages.js.erb", 
                             :layout => false }
            end
        end
    end
end

When I publish the store params[:store_id] and params[:publish_value] are successfully passed to the controller. And I receive "Success" message. But for some reason when I check the rails console or refresh the page there is no change in :publish value. It still shows as nil.

Here is the log after clicking publish button.

Started POST "/stores/publish" for 39.32.68.180 at 2016-06-09 23:08:28 +0000
Processing by StoresController#publish as JS
Parameters: {"utf8"=>"✓", "store_id"=>"35", "publish_value"=>"1", "commit"=>"submit"}
Customer Load (0.2ms)  SELECT  "customers".* FROM "customers" WHERE "customers"."id" = ? LIMIT 1  [["id", 44]]
Store Load (0.1ms)  SELECT  "stores".* FROM "stores" WHERE "stores"."customer_id" = ? LIMIT 1  [["customer_id", 44]]
Store Load (0.3ms)  SELECT  "stores".* FROM "stores" WHERE (35) LIMIT 1
(0.1ms)  begin transaction
(0.1ms)  commit transaction
Rendered stores/_publish.html.erb (0.6ms)
Rendered layouts/_messages.js.erb (0.1ms)
Rendered stores/publish.js.erb (4.5ms)
Completed 200 OK in 14ms (Views: 8.9ms | ActiveRecord: 0.7ms)

Help will be appreciated. Thanks.

Also here is the schema

create_table "stores", force: :cascade do |t|
t.string   "store_name"
t.integer  "customer_id"
t.text     "store_description"
t.datetime "created_at",        null: false
t.datetime "updated_at",        null: false
t.string   "picture"
t.boolean  "publish"
t.boolean  "approved"
end

add_index "stores", ["customer_id"], name: "index_stores_on_customer_id"

and the store.rb file

class Store < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :customer
has_many :products
mount_uploader :picture, PictureUploader
validates :customer_id, presence: true
validates :store_name, presence: true, length: {maximum:20}
#validates :store_description, presence: true, length: {minimum:100 , maximum:1000}, :on => :update 
end

Answer 1

The Rails log should show your SQL generated by ActiveRecord. That doesn't seem to be happening.
What happens when you try to update this model directly in Rails console?

$ rails c
$ store = Store.first()
$ store.update_attribute :publish, true

You should see something like:

SQL (0.3ms)  UPDATE "store" SET "publish" = ?, "updated_at" = ? WHERE "store"."id" = ?  
[["publish", "t"], ["updated_at", "2016-06-10 00:21:34.754662"], ["id", 1]]
(5.5ms)  commit transaction

You can also simplify this action and add some inline debugging that might help, like so:

    def publish
        @store = Store.find(params[:store_id])
        publish_value = params[:publish_value]=="1"

        if @store.update_attribute :publish, publish_value
            publish_value ? @message_type="success" : @message_type="warning"
            publish_value ? @message="Your store has been published successfully." : @message="Your store has been unpublished."
            puts "*** update_attribute succeeded.  @store is:"
            puts @store.inspect
            respond_to do |format|
                format.js
            end
        else 
            @message_type = "error"
            @message = @store.errors.full_messages.join(', ')
            puts "*** update_attribute failed.  @store is:"
            puts @store.inspect
            respond_to do |format|
                format.js { render :template => "layouts/messages.js.erb", :layout => false }
        end
    end