I am trying to store status information, but whenever I tried to call
the methods inside the session object, it would complain about this:
NoMethodError in TestController#getstatus
Your session store in files like tmp/sessions/ruby_sess.ff73c12d9549c9de .
Open one as text and read it. It shows "serialized" objects, meaning object that are converted into strings for cold storage.
Ruby objects are supposed to live in memory; think of them as 2D entities. Strings can only contain 1D entities. Some objects can't handle the flattening process; it squeezes the life out of them.
By and large, don't use the session object unless you must. And between two events (two controller actions, for example), never assume that the Ruby process running Rails is the same instance. The session hash cannot store a reference to an object in memory (like a real Hash would), it can only store a serialized copy of the object.
All communication between two events should be as thin and simple as possible. Store your object in a Model with an id, and pass this id between events somehow. I prefer to pass it as hidden fields in the View, but you can go ahead and use the session hash for that.
i think you should use the global var,start with "$"
the class-var is not persisstence between user-actions.
Never do that, because (among many other reasons) you should never assume that the Ruby instance that serves one Action is the same as serves the next one. Your server could reboot, for example, between each time the user looks
Thanks for the quick reply. I tried storing the information in the
model, but the information in the model cannot be retained. For
example, if I stored an global class variable @@ccount in Status, and
Status.gettext would increase the @ccount, when I output the value of
gettext in Status, it is always 1. It seems like the model is created
from scratch everytime the controller tried to call the methods inside.
What is ccount? The first step here is to give it a complete, self-documenting name. Programs are hard enough to read without abusing private acronyms.
Do you really need a variable to count something, for the lifespan of the Rails website, such that each user sees a new value in it? If so, I would store it in a YAML file, and open it at a path like RAILS_ROOT + '/lib/my.yaml'. Then YAML::load it when you need it and YAML::dump it when it changes.
If you don't want to do that, note the only members of a Model that store in a database are the attribute ones - not any extra variable you make, and certainly not the class-instance @@ variables.
Make another Model and put only one record in it, with ccount in that (with a better name). Then find(:first) this Model instance when you need the record, and save it when it changes.
