Rails: Assign values to fields in model

Question

I have two fields, first_name and brand_name. User enters first_name during sign in. And if he is an owner, he enters brand_name. brand_name by default equals first_name when the user creates an account. The user can change it later.

For this I wrote this method in the User model,

def brand_name
    first_name
end

But it sets brand_name to first_name though user enters different brand_name. I tried doing in this way:

def brand_name
    if brand_name.nil?
      first_name
    else
      brand_name
    end
end

But gives error- SystemStackError:

stack level too deep

Can anybody help in how to do this?

davogones · Accepted Answer · 2013-04-30 06:25:31Z

6

Your method is calling itself, which leads to infinite recursion. Rewrite your method like so:

def brand_name
  self[:brand_name].present? ? self[:brand_name] : first_name
end

edited Apr 30, 2013 at 6:25

answered Apr 29, 2013 at 21:24

davogones

7,42933 silver badges36 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

4 Comments

user2206724 Over a year ago

it is not taking first name if brand_name is blank. It displays brand_name if brand name is present. Else prints nothing.

davogones Over a year ago

That wasn't entirely clear from your question, but I went ahead and updated my answer to handle the case where brand name is set to empty string. You may want to consider validating the brand_name to have length > 0.

user2206724 Over a year ago

oh, m sorry for that, couldn't explain properly. Thanks for editing question! The solution is working :-) One doubt, y 'self' is necessary? not getting how to use it and when to use.

davogones Over a year ago

self was necessary here because I used the [] method to access an ActiveRecord attribute dynamically. This would be equivalent to read_attribute(:brand_name), but I prefer this form because it's shorter.

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Rails: Assign values to fields in model

1 Answer 1

4 Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

4 Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related