Question

I am just looking to seek some clarification to accessing Instance variables within its class (apologies if this is really basic).

My example is that I have a recipe controller and within it I have many actions but in paticular I have an INDEX and a SHOW action

def index
@q = Recipe.search(params[:q])
@q.build_condition
end

@q searches my Recipe model based on the params passed through my search form

i want to show the results on a different page to start (will look at AJAX option later), so in my SHOW action could I do this

 def show
 @searchresults = @q.result(:distinct => true)
 end

I think this is valid but if not I am going wrong somewhere. Can anyone advise or offer some constructive advice?

Thank you

Answer 1

No you can’t use instance variable like this because they both have different action and will get called for the different request.

However following will work

def index
  @q = Recipe.search(params[:q])
  @q.build_condition
  show
end

def show
  #Following line will work as we are calling this method in index 
  #and so we can use instance variable of index method in the show methos 
  @searchresults = @q.result(:distinct => true)
end