Question

Currently I’m making an app for users to create picture albums. The catch is that there can be multiple owners for each album, so in the form to create an album there is a check box portion where you highlight your friends names and “invite them” to be an owner. However, I am having a hard time getting it to work since it’s giving me an error in my AlbumsController#create. The error is :

undefined method 'user' for #<Album:0x007fcd9021dd00>

app/controllers/albums_controller.rb:43:in 'create'

Here’s my form

<%= form_for ([@user, @album]), :html => { :id => "uploadform" } do |f| %>
<div class="formholder">
    <%= f.label :name %>
    <%= f.text_field :name %>

    <br>
    <label>Hosts</label>
    <% @user.friends.each do |friend| %>
    <%= friend.name %>
    <%= check_box_tag 'album[user_ids][]', friend.id, @album.users.include?(friend) %>
    <% end %>

    <%= f.label :description %>
    <%= f.text_area :description %>

    <br>

    <%=f.submit %>
</div>
<% end %>

The checkboxes return an array of friend.id values that I want to invite to be owners for the album. The tricky part here is that I have a imaginary pending_album column in my join album_user model. Here’s what is sending me errors that I can’t figure out how to fix:

albums controller

def create
  @user = User.find(params[:user_id])
  @album = @user.albums.build(params[:album], :status => 'accepted')
  @friends = @user.friends.find(params[:album][:user_ids])
  for friend in @friends
    params[:album1] = {:user_id => friend.id, :album_id => @album.id, :status => 'pending'}
    AlbumUser.create(params[:album1])
  end
      #the next line is where the error occurs. why???
  if @user.save
    redirect_to user_album_path(@user, @album), notice: 'Album was successfully created.'
  else
    render action: "new"
  end
end

album model

class Album < ActiveRecord::Base
  attr_accessible :name, :description, :user_ids
  validates_presence_of :name

  validates :user, :uniqueness => true

  has_many :album_users
  has_many :users, :through => :album_users
  has_many :photos

end

user model

class User < ActiveRecord::Base

has_secure_password
attr_accessible :email, :name, :password, :password_confirmation, :profilepic
validates_presence_of :password, :on => :create

validates_format_of :name, :with => /[A-Za-z]+/, :on => :create
validates_format_of :email, :with => /\A([^@\s]+)@((?:[-a-z0-9]+\.)+[a-z]{2,})\Z/i, :on => :create
validates_length_of :password, :minimum => 5, :on => :create
# validates :album, :uniqueness => true

has_many :album_users
has_many :albums, :through => :album_users, :conditions => "status = 'accepted'"
has_many :pending_albums, :through => :album_users, :source => :album, :conditions => "status = 'pending'"
accepts_nested_attributes_for :albums

has_many :friendships, :dependent => :destroy
has_many :friends, :through => :friendships, :conditions => "status = 'accepted'"
has_many :requested_friends, :through => :friendships, :source => :friend, :conditions => "status = 'requested'", :order => :created_at
has_many :pending_friends, :through => :friendships, :source => :friend, :conditions => "status = 'pending'", :order => :created_at

has_attached_file :profilepic

before_save { |user| user.email = email.downcase }

def name_with_initial
  "#{name}"
end

private

  def create_remember_token
    self.remember_token = SecureRandom.urlsafe_base64
  end

end

album_user join table model

class AlbumUser < ActiveRecord::Base
  attr_accessible :user_ids, :album_id, :status, :user_id
  belongs_to :album
  belongs_to :user
end

parameters (looks a little fishy… especially since album_id is nil):

{“utf8″=>”✓”,
“authenticity_token”=>”xkIi6+1vjEk4yQcFs9vI1uvI29+Gyuenyp71vhpX9Hw=”,
“album”=>{“name”=>”123123”,
“user_ids”=>[“27”,
“28”],
“description”=>”123123”},
“commit”=>”Create Album”,
“user_id”=>”29”,
“album1″=>{“user_id”=>28,
“album_id”=>nil,
“status”=>”pending”}}

I’m not too sure what I’m doing wrong. Can someone help please!!

Answer 1

The error message is:

undefined method 'user' for #<Album:0x007fcd9021dd00>

All right, so something’s calling Album#user. Line 46 in the controller is @user.save, so how is user getting called?

class Album < ActiveRecord::Base
  attr_accessible :name, :description, :user_ids
  validates_presence_of :name

  validates :user, :uniqueness => true    # <-- bam!

  has_many :album_users
  has_many :users, :through => :album_users
  has_many :photos
end

save triggers validations, including that line right there, which validates that user is unique. Since this is exploding, I’m guessing that user is a column that doesn’t exist, either because a) it’s not defined in a migration or b) you didn’t run the migration.

(As an aside, I’m rather confused as to why you would have a unique user attribute on Album, an AlbumUser model with both user_id and user_ids, and a User model. Maybe it makes sense, but I think it’s more likely that it all needs a cleanup.)