Question

For some reason, the when @orgs is not working :

  @orgs = Organization.all.select{|a|a.active}.count
  case collection.size
  when 0; "No #{entry_name.pluralize} found"
  when @orgs; "#{@orgs} Businesses Returned!"
  else; "#{collection.total_entries} of #{@orgs} Businesses Returned!"
  end

Is this syntactically accurate? It will always return the last else statement. It never catches on the second when statement, even if @orgs == @orgs.

The actual number of @orgs = 1211.

So if I make the when statement when 1211; , it still doesn’t catch. Is there a syntactical mistake here?

Answer 1

Your syntax isn’t the issue. The logic in your conditions, I think, is all messed up.

So, @orgs does not = 1211, @orgs is a collection whose size is 1211. Big difference.

• This case statement will always fail because the case is collection.size, when it should probably be @orgs.size

Let’s say we changed it to be:

case @orgs.size
  ...

Then:

• Your first when statement would start working when @orgs.size == 0
• Your second when statement would still fail, because @orgs.size != @orgs – and it never will. @orgs refers to the collection of objects, while @orgs.size refers to the size of that collection. Even when @orgs == nil it will still fail because @orgs.size will throw a error because you’re calling the size method on a nil object, which isn’t allowed.
• Your else statement is always the one called because of the problems listed above, and because the way you’ve written it prevent any of the other cases from ever being true.

However, that’s probably still not enough. It looks to me like you’re trying to return singularized or pluralized text depending on how many you have. Here’s the code you probably intended to write, without the semi-colon usage:

@active_orgs = Organization.all.select{|a| a.active}
@singular_name = Organization.class.name
@plural_name = @singular_form.pluralize

case @active_orgs.size
when 1
  "1 active #{@singular_name} of a total #{Organization.count} #{@plural_name}!"
else
  "#{@active_orgs.count} active #{@singular_name} of a total #{Organization.count} #{@plural_name}!"
end

This will pluralize even when the count is 0, so it will say 0 active Organizations of a total 125 Organizations!

… or when the value is 1 it will say 1 active Organization of a total 125 Organziations!

If you don’t want Organization capitalized, you can add a call to .downcase to take care of that.