Question

In my Rails 3.2 project, in my controller, I have a show_html function. If it can find a site with a particular URL in the database, it will pass that on to the view. Otherwise, I want it to redirect to http://www.google.com

def show_html
  site_list = Site.where(:url => params[:url])
  if site_list.length > 0
    site = site_list.first

  else
    redirect_to "http://www.google.com"
  end

  @html = site.html
  render "show_html.html.erb"

end

When I tested it and site_list.length > 0, it works. But when site_length_list = 0, it gives an error undefined method 'html' for nil:NilClass. Why doesn’t it go into the else statement and render google.com?

Answer 1

It seems like instructions after redirects will be executed. Here is an article referencing this problem.

One way to solve this problem is to return the redirect like so:

def show_html
  site_list = Site.where(:url => params[:url])
  if site_list.length > 0
    site = site_list.first

  else
    return redirect_to "http://www.google.com"
  end

  @html = site.html
  render "show_html.html.erb"

end