Question

I’ve got a standard User model, it has in it an admin boolean. All’s well and good for users that have that set to true, but for normal users I get this error:

undefined local variable or method `current_user'
app/models/doc.rb:18:in `mine'
app/controllers/docs_controller.rb:9:in `index'

The Doc model on line 18 reads like this:

def self.mine
  where(:user_id => current_user.name, :retired => "active").order('created_at DESC')
end

My User model looks like this:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  devise :database_authenticatable, :registerable, :recoverable, :rememberable, :trackable, :validatable
  attr_accessor :current_password
  attr_accessible :name, :password, :password_confirmation, :current_password, :email, :remember_me, :admin
end

class Ability
  include CanCan::Ability
  def initialize(user)
    can :manage, :all if user.admin
  end
end

And in my application controller I have the following:

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
  protect_from_forgery

  after_filter :user_activity

  rescue_from CanCan::AccessDenied do |exception|
    redirect_to root_path
  end

  def admin?
    self.admin == true
  end

  def authenticate_admin
    redirect_to :new_user_session_path unless current_user && current_user.admin?
  end

  private

  def user_activity
    current_user.try :touch
  end

end

I think that’s everything relevant. I can’t for the life of me figure this out.

Answer 1

the current_user helper is a controller method that is not accessible from a model. You should pass current user in as a parameter from the controller to the model.

def self.mine(current_user)
  where(:user_id => current_user.name, :retired => "active").order('created_at DESC')
end

EDIT: Side note

It looks like user_id is a string in your logic. If this is what you are doing, you should reconsider. Setting up a belongs_to and a has_many with rails using identifiers in the database is far more maintainable. Using string ids is unconventional, and its a rabbit hole that ends in very bad places.