Question

I’m trying to retrieve a user name to insert into a comment on a blog post using rails

if I use

<%= comment.user_id %>"

it will give me an id but if I try and retrieve the user then call the name it return nil class

<%= User.find_by_id(comment.user_id).name %>"

why is this not working

if I leave .name off it returns a space in memory.

#<User:000x00000182fe48>

Answer 1

Most likely, the dynamic finder is getting confused by the id and is returning the (Ruby) object’s id (i.e. object_id) instead of the record’s id.

Try calling User.find(comment.user_id).name instead. Or, better: comment.user.name.

The above should answer your question, but what you really want to do is:

In the controller:

@user_name = @comment.user.name

In the view:

<%= @user_name %>