Question

UPDATE

I answered my question below, but I am still asking for a prettier way to achieve my goal. I have a feeling my controller knows too much about how to do things.

---

I have a create action in my VideoController :

def create
  method = 'get_' + params[:video][:provider] + '_video_id'
  provider_video_id = Video.send(method, params[:video][:url])
  thumb = Video.get_thumb_from_youtube(provider_video_id)

  @video = Video.new(params[:video], :provider_video_id => provider_video_id, :thumb => thumb, :views => 0, :likes => 0)
  if @video.save!
    redirect_to video_path('1'), notice:'Video added successfully.'
  else
    render :new
  end
end

I call Video.new with params[:video] with get its information from a form the user fills in. I then manipulate the URL the user passed in with the form to recover the video_provider_idand thethumb.

However, Rails is not saving the video with provider_video_idand thumb… I get this error on save :

Validation failed: Thumb can't be blank, Thumb is invalid, Provider video can't be blank

My guess is the newmethod doesn’t accept extra parameters…

Answer 1

I solved the problem. I think Ruby on Rails’ newmethod doesn’t accept more than one parameter, which usually is params. What I did is I the following :

method = 'get_' + params[:video][:provider] + '_video_id'
params[:video][:provider_video_id] = Video.send(method, params[:video][:url])
params[:video][:thumb] = Video.get_thumb_from_youtube(params[:video][:provider_video_id])
params[:video][:views] = params[:video][:likes] = 0    

@video = Video.new(params[:video])

Now, it seems to work.