Question

I am totally new to Ruby, and Rails. Currently, I am using helper methods. How can I write the same code as this in my Model ‘User’ so as to access all these variables from controller and view?

Writting code this way in helper is 100% functional:

module HomeHelper

  def init(user_id)
    @friends = Array.new    
    @followers = Array.new

    @user = User.find_by_id(user_id)    #Get User
    @friends = @user.users              #Get all his friends
                                        #
    @statuses = Array.new               #
    @friends.each do |friend|           #
      @statuses += friend.statuses      #Get all statuses for 'a' friend, then loop
    end                                 #
    @statuses += @user.statuses         #
    @statuses = @statuses.sort_by {|status| status.created_at}.reverse!

    @friendsof = Array.new
    @filtered_friendsof = Array.new

    @friends.each do |friend|
      @friendsof += friend.users
    end
    @friendsof.each do |friendof|
      unless (@friends.include?(friendof))
        if @user != friendof
          @filtered_friendsof << friendof
        end
      end
    end
  end

  @filtered_friendsof = @filtered_friendsof.uniq

end

Controller

class HomeController < ApplicationController
  def index
    @user_id=3
  end   
end

Model:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :statuses
  has_and_belongs_to_many(:users,
    :join_table => "user_connections",
    :foreign_key => "user1_id",
    :association_foreign_key => "user2_id")
  #has_many :user_connections
end

Answer 1

Home controller:

class HomeController < ApplicationController
  def index
    @user = User.find(3)
  end 
end

User model:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :statuses
  has_and_belongs_to_many :friends,
    :class_name => 'User'
    :join_table => "user_connections",
    :foreign_key => "user1_id",
    :association_foreign_key => "user2_id"

  def combined_statuses
    (friends.map(&:statuses) + statuses).flatten.
      sort_by {|status| status.created_at}.reverse!
  end
end

Now, you don’t need your helper method and in your view you can use:

@user.friends # instead of @friends
@user.combined_statuses # instead of @statuses

I’ll let you figure out the rest, but I hope you get the general idea of pushing the logic into the model.