Rails Output of Boolean Value is Incorrect

Question

Background

I have a model for stories in my rails app. One of the parts of the model is a boolean for "published".

On the creation and edit forms, I have a toggle button that shows "On" if the story is published and "Off" if it is not published. This toggle currently works correctly and I am able to toggle a story from being published or not published;; and this toggle updates the database accordingly.

The problem

On the show page I was trying to do an if statement but it wasn't resolving correctly, so I just did a print out of the published variable and it always prints out "false" even when checking the database it is set to "true".

The Code

<% @title="Stories" %>

<p><strong><%= @story.heading %></strong></p>

<p><%= @story.body %></p>

<p>
  <%= #!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Not working currently!!!!!!!!!!!!!
      # if @story.published 
      #   @publish_Notice = "This story has been made public."  
      # else
      #   @publish_Notice = "This story is private."  
      # end
      # @publish_Notice 

      @story.published   # Always prints out 'false' even when database shows 'true'
  %>
</p>

<p>~ <%= @story.authorName %></p>

<p>Submitted: <%= @story.created_at.strftime("%B, %d %Y") %><br/>

<%=
  @location = " "

  if @story.locationCity == "" || @story.locationCity == " " || @story.locationCity.nil?
    @location = " "
  else
    @location = "Near: " @story.locationCity + ", " + @story.locationState 
  end
%>
<%= @location %></p>

<% if (user_signed_in?) && (current_user == @story.user) %>
  <%= link_to 'Edit', edit_story_path(@story) %> |
  <%= link_to 'Delete', @story, method: :delete, data: { confirm: 'Are you sure?' } %> | 
<% end %>
<%= link_to 'Back', stories_path %>

@uzaif, I was having the issue in the line where I was printing out the published information. I have comments in my code showing where the problems were. — Christopher Warrington
– Christopher Warrington, Commented Jul 25, 2016 at 4:52

Christopher Warrington · Accepted Answer · 2016-07-25 04:51:36Z

1

The Answer After 2 days of trying to figure out and fix this problem myself, and not coming up with anything and finally posting the question here, I found the problem a few minutes later in a code snippet sitting in my stories controller. See if you can find the problem in my code below.

Old Code

def show
  if @story.published = false && @story.user != current_user
    redirect_to stories_url, notice: 'That action is not permitted.'
  end
end

Explanation

I setup this code snippet to stop people from being able to enter in a story number in the browser and seeing it, even if it wasn't published. The problem code is in the second line where I checked to see if the story was published. I only put one equal sign, and thus every time a story was shown it would change the published variable to 'false' without changing the database. I added the extra equal sign and now it all works as it should. Here is the new code.

New Code

def show
  if @story.published == false && @story.user != current_user
    redirect_to stories_url, notice: 'That action is not permitted.'
  end
end

Thank you to those who were so quick on asking for follow up information to help me with my problem. I appreciate your assistance.

answered Jul 25, 2016 at 4:51

Christopher Warrington

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3 Comments

Pramod Over a year ago

A single = missed can create lot of troubles.

mu is too short Over a year ago

if @story.published && ... might serve you better. Or maybe even if @story.visible_to(current_user) with all the "is it published" and "is this person the author" logic hidden inside the visible_to method.

siegy22 Over a year ago

It's always unadvisable to use x == false! You can run into problems like: the method returns nil, which would also be interpreted as false. so for the future, use only if x.

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