Unable to save an object with a pointer to a public-read object

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#1

I have a class where each object’s ACL is public-read but write is limited to the user who created it. Let’s say it’s a Post class in a news feed.

When someone else ‘likes’ this post, I want to store a new Like object , with a pointer to the liked post. However, the save fails with a 101 error which I have discovered is due to the liked post's ACL. If I make the liked post publicly writable, the save operation is successful.

I can think of a couple of workarounds - storing the object ID instead, or using cloud code - but they are not very graceful and seem like they shouldn’t be necessary.

My questions:

  1. Is this expected behavior?
  2. What is the rationale for this behavior? Why wouldn’t a publicly readable object be storable as a pointer in another object?
#2

I wanted to add one observation that may or may not be germane. Elsewhere in my application, I have a Follow class, which stores a pointer to two users (the user doing the following, and the user being followed). The _User class has the same restrictions as Post - public-read and private-write. But here I have no issues saving Follow objects. Is there something special in this regard about the _User class, or does it point to some other reason my Post isn’t saving? I am pretty confident it is due to the post’s ACL, but perhaps there is a class configuration issue in play?

#3

User class has built-in ACL for write operation. User can be read by anyone but only the user can write itself. Users can’t write data to other users.

Ä°f your system working fine with users, I would say your ACLs for Post or Like class are doing more than what you have told. Try creating ACLs again and remove old ones

#4

Thanks @uzaysan, there was as you suggested more to the story, though it was not ACL related.

I was mistakenly updating a property on the linked object (the ‘Post’ in my example), for which the user had no write access. When saving the comment, the illegal change to the post was also being saved. It was this cascaded save, not the save of the comment itself, that was being rejected.