Question

First off I’m a total Rails newbie (front-end guy looking to learn rails), so bear with me.

I’m making a simple todo-ish app to help myself learn and have run into an issue. I’m assuming this is something super simple that I’m missing but here goes.

In my app users can create a number of “process_lists” (basically a list of tasks to complete). They also create “projects”. Each project has a “process_list” associated with it. Process_lists are reusable, basically a set of steps to complete a project. One process list can be used for mnay projects. I’ve tagged the database table for projects with a column called “process_list_id” to help with associations. This is done when the user creates a project.

Now the code, this is whats in my projects controller:

   def show
@project = Project.find(params[:id])
@project_process = ProcessList.where(:id =>  @project.process_list_id)

respond_to do |format|
  format.html # show.html.erb
  format.json { render json: @project }
end

end

And in my view:

<%= @project_process.all %>

^^ This works great to display the whole row like so:

ProcessList id: 6, name: “Derp Derp Derp Derp “, steps: nil, description: “lasdjlsdjsadas”, created_at: “2012-06-22 16:21:41”, updated_at: “2012-06-22 16:21:41”, step1: “sjkdfldsjf”, step2: “alkdfjdlfj”, step3: “lakdfjdljf”, step4: “”, step5: “”, step6: “”, step7: “”, step8: “”, step9: “”, step10: “”, step11: nil, step12: nil, step13: nil, step14: nil, step15: nil, step1_description: “klsdjfldskjf”, step2_description: “sldjfldskjflsdkfjdls”, step3_description: “lkdsfjdlkfjsd”, step4_description: “”, step5_description: “”, step6_description: “”, step7_description: “”, step8_description: “”, step9_description: “”, step10_description: “”, step11_description: nil, step12_description: nil, step13_description: nil, step14_description: nil, step15_description: nil>

Now what I want to do is display certain columns from this row. For example “step1”. It seems really simple but I’ve tried a number of thing and googled for hours now and I can’t figure it out. Any help would be great.

Answer 1

To directly answer your question:

<%= @project_process.first.step1 %>

This will print out the value of the step1 column, “sjkdfldsjf” in your case.

If you have the line has_one :process_list in your class Project, then you can assign the @project_process variable much easier: @process_list = @process.process_list. You may also put belongs_to :process in the ProcessList class, so you have access to the process from the list object.