Newb - variable returns # sign?

rubyonrails-talk
1

Hi Gurus-

I want to return the variety from the species table based on the active record link to inventory table

class Species < ActiveRecord::Base   has_many :inventories end

class Inventory < ActiveRecord::Base   belongs_to :species (this is the singular and the plural, so that's OK) end

My inventory_controller looks like:

def show     @inventory = Inventory.find(params[:id])    @variety = Species.find(params[:species_id])    end

and in the inventory show view:

<%= @variety %>

my out put shows all the fields from the inventory but only a pound sign(#) where the @variety is at.

Any thoughts?

2

@variety is a collection of multiple records.

use @variety[0] to show the first one.

Look into "collections" for viewing each record.

-- gw (www.railsdev.ws)

3

When you do <%= foo %>, it just tries to turn foo into a string. For your basic activerecord model, that gives you something like #<Question:0x17ce158>, so I'm not surprised that the browser only displays a #. Depending on what you're trying to do you may want to define to_s on your model, show each property individually or if you're just checking that @variety is being set properly you can use <%= debug @variety %>

Fred

4

Keeping in mind that each inventory item has only species; if I wanted to display the variety (from species) while I was in the show view (of inventory) do I even need to set a variable? In SQL (my background) I would : "SELECT variety FROM species a, inventory b WHERE a.id = b.species_id AND b.id = (the current record)" I just want to display the associated value from another table, Sorry for the simplistic questions, I have searched my book and this forum to no avail.

5

Keeping in mind that each inventory item has only species; if I wanted to display the variety (from species) while I was in the show view (of inventory) do I even need to set a variable? In SQL (my background) I would : "SELECT variety FROM species a, inventory b WHERE a.id = b.species_id AND b.id = (the current record)" I just want to display the associated value from another table, Sorry for the simplistic questions, I have searched my book and this forum to no avail.

The only problem you're having is that the output from <%= @variety %>
is not html friendly. if you were to look at the raw page source you'd
see something like #<Variety: #0x123465>. Replace it with something else (see my previous email for
suggestions). and you should be fine

Fred