Question

I don’t understand why I get a nil error below. But when I add self I don’t get the error and everything gets assigned corrected. Can you explain to me why if I don’t use self this does not work?

models/user.rb

def update_user_email!(new_email)
  email = new_email # When I use self.name = new_email this works
end

controllers/users_controller

def create
  @user = User.new(params[:user])
  @user.update_user_email!(email)
  @user.save
end

Thanks

Answer 1

When you are in a method inside a model, if you use just the attribute name it will treat it like a variable with the scope limited to this method. Using self.attribute will actually access the underlying field in the model and let you assign values.

As a basic rule, any time you are actually assigning values in a model, you should always use

self.attribute = value

On a side point, I am not sure if your code was for example only, but it doesn’t like look a method you would need.

In the controller you could just do

@user.email = email