I'm a bit flummoxed by something and hoping someone can offer an explanation.
If I create a controller (test) with a RESTfully named method and a view (.../test/index), the value of the instance variable passes to the view.
class TestController < ApplicationController def index @variable = 'Pass to a view' end end
As long as the name of the view and the method match it should work. There is nothing special about the default methods in this respect. Post a bit more code that exhibits the problem. Presumably the view is called views/test/foo.html.erb. Unless there is something special about a controller called 'test' that is.
Colin
Well, as Colin says, there is nothing about the name of a method or view that would muck with an instance variable working, but there could also be something weird about TestController (that it *may* be reserved, but i doubt it)...
Are you getting an error/stack trace?
Your routes could be an issue but you'd be getting an obvious error (assuming you're in dev mode) saying something to the effect of "No route matches "/test/foo" with {:method=>:get}"
Try posting some of your code and seeing if you get some clearer
answers. 
Cheers!
Hi to Colin, Jennifer and anyone else,
If nothing else, this forum serves as a sanity check.
My difficulty arose when I created an application wide template as a container for various views and attempted to pass a title variable to the template. None of my fiddling raised any errors. After reading your replies I went back to my application and sacrificed another hour to Ruby idiosyncracies. Here is what I've done and the results.
#-------- within layout/application class LinkController < ApplicationController def display @title = "title (display)" end def index @title = "title (index)" end def foo @title = "title (foo)" end end
Hi to Colin, Jennifer and anyone else,
If nothing else, this forum serves as a sanity check.
My difficulty arose when I created an application wide template as a container for various views and attempted to pass a title variable to the template. None of my fiddling raised any errors. After reading your replies I went back to my application and sacrificed another hour to Ruby idiosyncracies. Here is what I've done and the results.
#-------- within layout/application class LinkController < ApplicationController def display @title = "title (display)" end def index @title = "title (index)" end def foo @title = "title (foo)" end end ---- <title><%= @title %></title> --- I created a view named 'display' with the above embedded Ruby and opened it in the browser. The title was BLANK. Next I renamed the view 'index' and opened it in the browser. The title appropriately showed "title (index)" Then I renamed the view 'foo' and again a BLANK title. I renamed the view back to 'index' and the title reappeared.
The above was with a template, so I decided to try the same fun experiment with a standalone view. And things got murkier. Views named 'index' and 'foo' display their titles. Views named 'display' are BLANK.
Just on the off chance that Ruby is weirder than I think, I checked the list of reserved words. No conflicts there. I also considered there might be something bizarre about the title tags, so just stuck a variable in the middle of the view <body> <@= @title %></body>. This just reproduced the earlier results.
I presume you meant <%= rather than <@= Did you include some fixed identifiable text in each view to check that the correct view is being shown? The possible name conflicts are not so much with Ruby (which would generally give an error of some sort) but with Rails. Have you tried other variable names? This is certainly not a general problem or we would all be falling over it all the time. Have you checked in the log file (/log/development.log) for any errors?
Hello Colin,
I did mean <% instead of <@ and I did have some identifiable text with each view name version. Just cut out what I thought was extraneous to the post. I looked at the development.log and it is clean. The only differences between the view name versions were the expected time/ session/performance/etc.
The thought occurred to me that perhaps the use of duplicate view names was the unlikely problem. I've used 'display' as a view name several times across different folders. But I renamed everything and eliminated this as an issue.
So for now I am left with a Ruby on Rails app that just has a quirky bias against 'display' as a view name. There are plenty of alternative naming options and alternatives seem to work. So ultimately not a big deal, though I'll be carrying a niggling suspicion that something will pop up and bite me one day.
Thank you much for the replies and support. As I indicated earlier, this forum serves as a sanity safety net that keeps me from doing regrettable things to my computer. If I ever turn up an explanation for the problem I will pass it on.
Cheers, Bill
Hello Colin,
I did mean <% instead of <@ and I did have some identifiable text with each view name version. Just cut out what I thought was extraneous to the post. I looked at the development.log and it is clean. The only differences between the view name versions were the expected time/ session/performance/etc.
The thought occurred to me that perhaps the use of duplicate view names was the unlikely problem. I've used 'display' as a view name several times across different folders. But I renamed everything and eliminated this as an issue.
So for now I am left with a Ruby on Rails app that just has a quirky bias against 'display' as a view name. There are plenty of alternative naming options and alternatives seem to work. So ultimately not a big deal, though I'll be carrying a niggling suspicion that something will pop up and bite me one day.
Have you checked whether your action ever gets called (stick a breakpoint in there). ?
Fred
Hi Frederick,
I can't give you a direct answer since the breakpoints in my IDE don't work. Actually I can set them in .rb files, but no response under any conditions. So at the moment I can only verify that the method is being called. I'm not sure if I can set a command line breakpoint.
Cheers, Bill
Hi Frederick,
I can't give you a direct answer since the breakpoints in my IDE don't work. Actually I can set them in .rb files, but no response under any conditions. So at the moment I can only verify that the method is being called. I'm not sure if I can set a command line breakpoint.
you can always resort to slightly more primitive methods, eg stick
raise "I've been run"
in the action method.
Fred
Hello again Frederick,
I took up your suggestion and it was revelatory, though I'm not sure what it reveals.
With a view and action named 'display', an exception was NOT raised from the action. With alternative names, the exception was raised as expected.
I created another application and got the same results. I'm curious as to whether this behavior is repeatable on someone else's setup.
Cheers, Bill