Question

I am attempting to create a journal where a logged in user’s journal_entries are listed when the index view is called.

I have installed the Devise gem for the user sign up, log in/out authentication.

I have created a model, JournalEntries, which includes a date, string and text fields.

After creating the database, rake db:create and then migrating, rake db:migrate – I attempted to list a users journal entries in the journal_entries/index view. The default view that was derived via scaffolding lists ALL USERS journal_entries. This doesn’t make for a great journal – where you can see the entries of all other users.

In my research I’ve come to realize that I didn’t have a field in the journal_entries table which referenced the users table.

I create a migration show below:

class AddForeignKeyToJournalEntries < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def up
    change_table :journal_entries do |t|
        t.references :user
    end
    #add a foreign key
    execute <<-SQL
        ALTER TABLE journal_entries
            ADD CONSTRAINT fk_journal_entries_users
            FOREIGN KEY (user_id)
            REFERENCES users(id)
    SQL
  end

  def down
    execute <<-SQL
        ALTER TABLE journal_entries
            DROP FOREIGN KEY fk_journal_entries_users
    SQL
  end

end

(I also changed the users.rb and journal_entries.rb models to include belongs_to and has_many association – at first I thought this is all I had to do, and somehow the database would pick this up, but it didn’t…)

This successfully added foreign key – user_id to the journal_entries table, and I thought I was in the clear.

What is happening now is when a journal_entry is created – the user_id column is blank – no info is being populated there….? I have verified this by logging into Postgres on my local machine.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

The reason the user_id column is blank in the journal_entry table is because you need to add the current user’s id when a new journal entry is created.

In your JournalEntries Controller you’ll need to add this to your create action:

@journal_entry.user_id = current_user.id

or, @journal_entry.user = current_user

Then, in your JournalEntries Controller index action:

Instead of @journal_entries = JournalEntry.all you can display only the current logged in user’s entries with @journal_entries = current_user.journal_entries.

Hope that helps!