Question

Rails 3.0.3
ruby 1.9.2p0

The Problem:

I have a Users table which has many items, the item(s) in turn therefore belongs to the Users.

In my model item.rb i attempt to save the item along with the value for the user.id so i have:

self.User_ID = @user.id

this however give me the error

Called id for nil, which would mistakenly be 4 -- if you really wanted the id of nil, use object_id

this is causing some confusion that it can’t find this as in the show.html.erb that ‘wraps’ this page <%= @user.id %> displays the correct ID on the page

Many thanks in advance

** EDIT **
The Shorten action is the action upon which i want to parameter to be passed

class ItemsController < ApplicationController

  def redirect
    @item = Item.find_by_shortened(params[:shortened])
    if @item
      #redirect_to @item.original
      redirect_to @item.original
    else
      redirect_to :shorten
    end
  end

  def shorten
    @host = request.host_with_port
    @user = current_user

Answer 1

You need to load the @user model in every action that will require access to it. Having it render properly in the show action will not guarantee it is loaded in the update action.

Usually you need to have something like this in your controller:

class UsersController < ApplicationController
  before_filter :load_user, :except => [ :index, :new, :create ]

  # ...

protected
  def load_user
    @user = User.find(params[:user_id] || params[:id])
  rescue ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound
    render(:text => 'Record not found')
  end
end