Question

I get the following error when I call ContactUser.new:

contact_user.rb:13: syntax error, unexpected ')', expecting '='
contact_user.rb:19: syntax error, unexpected kEND, expecting $end

Usually an error like this is pretty obvious, but I can’t seem to pinpoint the cause. Any help would be appreciated.

class ContactUser < ActiveRecord::Base

  include Tableless

  column :name, :string
  column :email, :string
  column :category, :string
  column :message, :text
  column :recipient, :string

  validates_presence_of :name, :email, :category, :message, :recipient

  def self.create_from_params(params={}, recipient)
    params[:message].encode!('US-ASCII', :undef => :replace) # re-encode message in US ASCII to ensure mailer works with it

    ContactUser.create(:name => params[:name], :email => params[:email], :category => params[:category], :message => params[:message], :recipient => recipient)
  end

end

module Tableless

  def self.included(base)
    base.extend(ClassMethods)
  end

  module ClassMethods

    def columns() @columns ||= []; end

    def column(name, sql_type=nil, default=nil, null=true)
      columns << ActiveRecord::ConnectionAdapters::Column.new(name.to_s, default, sql_type.to_s, null)
    end

  end

  def save(validate=true)
    validate ? valid? : true
  end

end

Answer 1

Here’s your problem:

def self.create_from_params(params={}, recipient)
#---------------------------------^^^

You’re declaring a default value for the params parameter to create_from_params but you don’t provide a default for recipient. Parameters with defaults must appear at the end of the argument list and they can’t be followed by parameters without defaults.

This error message:

contact_user.rb:13: syntax error, unexpected ')', expecting '='

tells us that Ruby was expecting to see an equals sign for the recipient default value when it hit the closing parenthesis for the argument list.