Question

What I’m trying to do is be able to add notes and associate them with clients in Rails.

My client model looks like this:

class Client < ActiveRecord::Base
  attr_accessible :company_name, :contact_name, :email_address, :phone_number,
                                :street_address, :city, :state, :zip

  has_many :notes, dependent: :destroy

end

And my notes model looks like this:

class Note < ActiveRecord::Base
  attr_accessible :content
  belongs_to :client
  default_scope order: 'notes.created_at DESC'

  validates :client_id, presence: true
end

My index.html.erb of my client looks like this:

<% @clients.each do |client| %>
   .
   .
   .
   <%= form_for(@notes) do |f| %>
                        <%= f.text_area :content, placeholder: "Compose new note..." %>
                        <%= f.submit "Add Note", class: "buttonPri addnote" %> 
                    <% end %>
<% end %>

in my clients controller I have:

def index
    if signed_in?
        @clients = Client.all
  @note = client.notes.build
    else
        redirect_to signin_path
      end
end

and in my notes controller:

def create
    @note = client.notes.build(params[:note])
    if @note.save
      flash[:success] = "Note Created"
      redirect_to root_path
        else
      render 'static_pages/home'
      end
    end

I get undefined local variable or method client for #<ClientsController:0x007f835191ed18> error when I load the client index page. What I think is happening is that the controller can’t see the block variable client and I need to move it out of the controller and into the form_for. Is that the right approach and how do I do that?

I was looking through the rails API and found this:

<%= form_for([@document, @comment]) do |f| %>
 ...
<% end %>
Where @document = Document.find(params[:id]) and @comment = Comment.new.

Is this the direction I need to go in?

Answer 1

The trouble is you’re referring to client in your controller but this isn’t defined.

Based on your example:

def create
  @note = client.notes.build(params[:note])
  if @note.save
    flash[:success] = "Note Created"
    redirect_to root_path
  else
    render 'static_pages/home'
  end
end

Where is client supposed to be coming from? Usually it’s loaded by a parent controller class in a before_filter call that typically looks like:

before_filter :load_client

def load_client
  @client = Client.find_by_id!(params[:client_id])
end

It could be you have a client method defined that is returning nil because it can’t find something. In which case you should track that down and see what the problem is. This is where using find! which throws an exception instead of quietly failing is often a better way to go.

When you see errors relating to calling methods on nil it’s a sign that something hasn’t been loaded properly, so you should track down that missing object.