CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby-on-railsarrays
Chris Mendla
Chris Mendla

Reputation: 1017

Rails - I cannot read the contents of an array

I am having an issue trying to read the contents of a rails array. (ruby 2.x, rails 4.x)

I have a search form where one of the items is a select multiple. The array is stored in a text field called category. I am getting the array with

 <%= f.select :category,
                       options_for_select(@categories.sort),
                       {:include_blank => true},
                       {:multiple => true, :size =>10}  %>

If I do a <%= @search.inspect %> I get something like

Search id: 675, document_title: "", summary: "", owner: "[\"\"]", category: "[\"\", \"Apples\", \"Calendar\", \"Forms\"]", file_name: "", created_at: "2015-12-28 13:57:45", updated_at: "2015-12-28 13:57:45", doc_to_email: nil

I see that the category field has an array with the three items I selected.

If I do <%= @search.category %> I see

["", "Apples", "Calendar", "Forms"]

So far, it seems to me that the array is there.

However, 

<%= @search.category[0..8] %>

results in

["", "App

<%= @search.category.first %>

[

<%= @search.category.last %>

]

Which was not what I was expecting

<% @search.category.each do |cat_name| %>"
     <%=  cat_name %>
<% end %>

results in an error of

Showing C:/Users/cmendla/RubymineProjects/technical_library/app/views/searches/show.html.erb where line #85 raised:

undefined method `each' for "[\"\", \"Apples\", \"Calendar\", \"Forms\"]":String Rails.root: C:/Users/cmendla/RubymineProjects/td

Application Trace | Framework Trace | Full Trace app/views/searches/show.html.erb:85:in `_app_views_searches_show_html_erb___938985047_80352240'

What am I doing wrong in trying to read the contents of the array?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 59

Answers (1)

Vasfed
Vasfed

Reputation: 18454

Your models' category is a string, not an array.

To store array in a text field - add

serialize :category, JSON

into model.

Upvotes: 2

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