Question

I thought methods such as name and email were default in rails?

In my static pages view, in profile.html.erb I have:

<% if logged_in? %>
<% provide(:title, @user.name) %>
<% else %>
<% provide(:title, 'Profile')%>
<% end %>

I put in my static_page_controller

def profile
  @user = User.find_by_remember_token(:remember_token)
end

When I go to the console User.find_by_remember_token(“actualtoken”).name returns me the appropriate users name, but :remember_token does not. How do I make :remember_token = the logged in users remember token?

In my sessions_helper I have

def log_in(user)
    cookies.permanent[:remember_token] = user.remember_token
    current_user = user
  end

  def logged_in?
    !current_user.nil?
  end

  def current_user=(user)
    @current_user = user
  end

  def current_user
      @current_user ||= user_from_remember_token
  end

  def log_out
    current_user = nil
    cookies.delete(:remember_token)
  end


    private

    def user_from_remember_token
      remember_token = cookies[:remember_token]
      User.find_by_remember_token(remember_token) unless remember_token.nil?
    end
end

copying it to my static_pages_helper didn’t accomplish anything.

Answer 1

Quick things you should be aware of the rails framework and the ruby language:

• A function defined in any of your helpers will be available to all helpers and views (so there is no reason to copy and paste the same functions through different helpers);
• You’re probably using an authentication gem and I guess it is the Devise gem. If this is right, then you should not be overriding their helpers unless you have a reason to do this;
• User.anything will call the static function anything from the User class;
• user = User.find_by_anything(the_thing) is a class static helper provided by ActiveModel that will query the database looking for a user that has *anything = the_thing*; this user or nil will be returned;
• user.an_attribute will call a function that returns the user specified attribute (which is the same as the column name of this attribute by default);
• user.try(:anything) will try to call the function anything from the user and return its value. If user is nil, the returned value will also be nil.

That said, I guess you just wanted to retrieve the current user remember token, which can be accomplished with the following:

user = current_user.try(:remember_token)

EDITED: The question is a bit messy, but I also think the following code will work with your controller:

def profile
  @user = User.find_by_remember_token(params[:remember_token])
end

You must access the request’s parameters through the params hash.