Question

This is a very basic task, but I can’t for the life of me find the cause of the issue.

I am doing a basic to-do lists attached to user accounts. I am using Sorcery to help with the user authentication & creation, which seemingly works fine.

The Problem Is This:

When I try to call `@user.list’ in any way, I get the following exception (this is copied out of the rails console):

@user = User.where(:email => "[e-mail]")
   => [#<User id: 1, email: "[e-mail]", crypted_password:  "$2a$10$tiLFyiuLGSB.UXElEdaTGerSv6/TZoLL4nVFdCNsv1AW...", salt:  "e6275124385b0ea157875bba281c7ae9e3a9858e", created_at: "2011-10-02 05:59:02", updated_at:  "2011-10-02 05:59:02", remember_me_token: nil, remember_me_token_expires_at: nil>] 
@user.lists
NoMethodError: undefined method `lists' for #<ActiveRecord::Relation:0x007f8b6ca89748>
from /Users/<myaccount>/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p290@rails3.1/gems/activerecord-      3.1.0/lib/active_record/relation.rb:459:in `method_missing'
from (irb):4
from /Users/<myaccount>/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p290@rails3.1/gems/railties-3.1.0/lib/rails/commands/console.rb:45:in `start'
from /Users/<myaccount>/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p290@rails3.1/gems/railties-3.1.0/lib/rails/commands/console.rb:8:in `start'
from /Users/<myaccount>/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p290@rails3.1/gems/railties-3.1.0/lib/rails/commands.rb:40:in `<top (required)>'
from script/rails:6:in `require'
from script/rails:6:in `<main>'

My Code/DB Setup

The setup is simple – I have a User model and a List model. a List :belongs_to :user, and a User has_many :lists. I have added user_id to the lists table with the following migration:

class AddUserIdForeignKeyToLists < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def change
    add_column :lists, :user_id, :integer
  end
end

I have confirmed that the field user_id does exist in my table (MySQL).

My User model is:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base

  has_many :lists

  authenticates_with_sorcery!

  attr_accessible :email, :password, :password_confirmation

  validates_confirmation_of :password
  validates_presence_of :password, :on => :create
  validates_presence_of :email
  validates_uniqueness_of :email  
end 

… and my List model looks like this:

class List < ActiveRecord::Base
   belongs_to :user
end

The table design view from MySQL is as follows:

users:

lists:

This sounds to me like there might be a relationship issue, but I can’t seem to put this together. Does anyone have any insight? I’ve never run into any trouble at all like this running Rails 3.0.X on a linux machine, but this is my first foray into Rails 3.1 on OSX, so I’m not sure if maybe I overlooked an underlying change?

Thanks for any guidance

Answer 1

User.where(...)

returns a collection of User objects, not a User object. You need to get a User object.

@user = User.where(...).first

or, better

@user = User.find_by_email("[e-mail]")