CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby
JVG
JVG

Reputation: 21150

Ruby: undefined local variable or method for Class

I have what I assumed was a very simple method within my controller:

class ReportsController < ApplicationController

  client = MWS.reports

  def request_all_listings
    begin
      parser = client.request_report('_GET_FLAT_FILE_OPEN_LISTINGS_DATA_', opts = {})
      @result = parser.parse["ReportRequestInfo"]["ReportProcessingStatus"]

      puts @result

    rescue Excon::Errors::ServiceUnavailable => e
      logger.warn e.response.message
      retry
    end
  end

  request_all_listings

end

This gives me the error:

 undefined local variable or method `request_all_listings' for ReportsController:Class

What am I doing wrong here? When I delete the def request_all_listings def and end lines and just have the begin/rescue/end my code works fine...

Upvotes: 3

Views: 9404

Answers (2)

Schwern
Schwern

Reputation: 164829

request_all_listings is ambiguous. It's either a variable or a class method call. request_all_listings is an object method.

To fix it, you need to either define request_all_listings as a class method.

def self.request_all_listings
    ...
end

Or create an object to call request_all_listings with.

ReportsController.new.request_all_listings

In general it's bad form to do work when a class is loaded. This makes it impossible to load the class without it doing work and can slow things down and make it difficult to use and test.

Instead I'd suggest doing this work when an instance is loaded and caching it in a class instance variable.

class Foo
  # class instance variable
  @all_listings = []

  # class method
  def self.request_all_listings
    puts "Calling request_all_listings"
    @all_listings = [1,2,3]

    return
  end

  # class method
  def self.all_listings
    request_all_listings if @all_listings.size == 0

    return @all_listings
  end

  # object method
  def all_listings
    return self.class.all_listings
  end
end

# request_all_listings is only called once for two objects
puts Foo.new.all_listings.inspect
puts Foo.new.all_listings.inspect

Upvotes: 6

Gavriel
Gavriel

Reputation: 19237

move the line request_all_listings into the constructor:

def initialize
    request_all_listings
end

When you create a ReportsController instance, initialize will automatically run:

reports = ReportsController.new

Upvotes: 0

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