Question

I am trying to simply create a button that will delete a contact from a list of contacts.

At the moment I have the following setup:

Contacts Controller

def destroy
 @user.contacts.delete(params[:contact])
 @contact.delete
end

View

<tbody>
<% @contacts.each do |contact| %>
    <tr>    
        <td><%= contact.name %></td>
        <td><%= contact.company %></td>
        <td><%= contact.email %></td>
        <td><%= contact.phone %></td>
        <td><%= contact.mobile %></td>
        <td><%= button_to 'Delete', contact, :method => :delete %></td>
    </tr>
<% end %>

Routes

controller :contact do
 get "newcontact" => "contact#new"
 get "index" => "contact#index"
 delete "delete" => "contact#destroy"
end

I have read online that using button_to is the preferred method but at the moment I am getting the following error:

undefined method `contacts' for nil:NilClass

It would be great to get any feedback that might help me fix this.

Thanks in advance
Tom

For anyone looking for the final answer on this it was

   def destroy
     contact = current_user.contacts.find(params[:id])
     contact.destroy
     redirect_to index_path
   end

In my controller and the following in my view

<%= button_to 'Delete', contact, :method => :delete %>

Thanks
Tom

Answer 1

If you are goin to use @user you need to set @user in your delete method or else it will be nil – hence the error message

The other issue is that the id of the contact is params[:id] and not params[:contact]

I’d just do

contact = current_user.contacts.find(params[:id])
contact.destroy

You definitely want to be deleting the contact via the user or else people can delete other users’ contacts. This deletes the contact and removes it from the association – you don’t need to do anything else