Question

I created a model for a thing called a Lesson that has :content and a :user_id. For early builds of this app, I want the content to be changing, based on my entry, and for the user_id to always = 1 so that it’s clean in the DB and there’s not a nil value.

How do I go about this?

In my lessons_controller.rb I have this:

  def create
    @lesson = Lesson.new(params[:lesson])
if @lesson.save
... do something
else 
... do something else

I’m guessing this would be the best place to define that the user_id = 1 but how should I go about that?

Answer 1

You can just set @lesson.user_id = 1 in the line after you create it with new, and before you save it.

Another way to do it would be to set a hook in the lesson model –

before_validation :on => :create do |lesson|
  lesson.user_id = 1
end