Day 80 - #100DaysofCode - Stuck On A Rails Problem

If you keep up with my #100DaysofCode, you will know that I am working on another rails application to show on my portfolio. Today I focused on the application and made a few updates.

SincerelyBrittany / photo-app

I am still using the unsplash gem to display images on my application. The goal is to allow a user to search for a picture and then if they like it, they can use a check box and add it to their profile. Seems simple, but I keep running into an issue.

First, I iterate over the Unsplash gem and create a new Photo instance.

   photos = Unsplash::Photo.search("cats")
        @photos = []
        photos.each do |p|
           a = Photo.new(photo: p["urls"].full, quote: p["alt_description"] )
           @photos << a
        end 

Then, I display it on the index show page so that a user can view the photos:

<%= form_tag(new_photo_path, {:method => :get}) do %>
    <% @photos.each do |p| %>
            <img src="<%= p.photo %>" alt="random" ><br>
            <div><p> <%= p.quote %> </p></div><br>
            <%= check_box_tag "photo_ids[]", p , true%>
    <% end %>
  <%= submit_tag "Submit Post" %>
<% end %>

Above p is equal to #<Photo id: nil, photo: "https://images.unsplash.com/photo-894384059358603-a3...", quote: "selective focus photography brown cat lying over b...", created_at: nil, updated_at: nil>

The issue occurs when I get to the controller. I put a byebug in my new method and when I check the params I get the following:

(byebug) params
<ActionController::Parameters {"photo_ids"=>["#<Photo:0x00007f9620c97d28>", "#<Photo:0x00007f961bb58278>", "#<Photo:0x00007f9620880528>", "#<Photo:0x00007f9620a54160>", "#<Photo:0x00007f961cd44cc0>", "#<Photo:0x00007f9620d86fb8>", "#<Photo:0x00007f961ba078d8>", "#<Photo:0x00007f961cbd5b50>", "#<Photo:0x00007f961cc34f88>", "#<Photo:0x00007f9620c25a48>"], "commit"=>"Submit Post", "controller"=>"photos", "action"=>"new"} permitted: false>

It appears that the photos are the Photo objects that have not been saved yet, which I thought was great, Ill just save them in the method right? WRONG! I have no idea how to save it from here. I have tried saving it into a variable and then saving. I have tried referencing the items within the object.

(byebug) a = params[:photo_ids][1]
"#<Photo:0x00007f961bb58278>"
(byebug) a.save
*** NoMethodError Exception: undefined method `save' for "#<Photo:0x00007f961bb58278>":String

nil
(byebug) 

No luck. It looks like the checkbox is sending it as a string as opposed to the object itself. I know I can not find the object based off the id since the id does not exist yet. Is there a way around this or just a better way to do this process in general?

I am trying to avoid creating/saving the unsplash items immediately to my database, I do not want to save until after a user has selected it. I will try again tomorrow, hopefully find a way to get this task done.

Fun Fact : For the past few days my rails console was not working. I thought it was my computer but then I googled: "rails console not working"

Saw the following Stack Overflow Question

Ran spring stop and then rails console and my console was working again. I have no idea what spring stop does but I wanted to share for any other code newbies who may run into this issue.

As always, thanks for reading!

Sincerely,
Brittany

Song of the Day:

Comments

[Mbonu Blessing]

Hi Brittany.
I am not sure i would recommend creating the instance first before rendering it in the view and the photo_ids param doesn't really mean much since they don't have ids yet. Maybe we could have a video chat to work through it because i can't really figure how out how to fix it.

[Brittany]

Hi Mbonu,

I would love to schedule a time to video chat and go over it. I know that the name photo_ids does not really make sense since they do not have ids yet, I will rename the param to photo_objects but I do not know if/how I can go about referencing that instance. I will private message you to set up a time. Thank you again!

[Mbonu Blessing]

I just sent you a DM on twitter

[Arnaud Joubay]

There are many things going on here, but here are a few pointers.

First,
<%= check_box_tag "photo_ids[]", p , true%>
should be
<%= check_box_tag "photo_ids[]", p.id , true%>
The id that will be returned here being the Unsplash photo id.

Second, since you used p, what you receive in the params[:photo_ids] is an array of strings. Even though it looks like the fingerprint of the object, it's not the object anymore but its fingerprint.
So when you call params[:photo_ids][1].save, you're calling save on a string (the string representation of the object, "#Photo:0x00007f961bb58278").
Hence the error NoMethodError Exception: undefined methodsave' for "#Photo:0x00007f961bb58278":Stringwhich tells you that there is nosave` method for String objects.