Rails Cookie Issue

Question

I have the following new method in a ruby on rails app:

def new
   if cookies[:owner].empty?
     cookies[:owner] = SecureRandom.hex
   end
   @movie = Movie.new
   @movie.owner = cookies[:owner]
end

Basically, each new user is supposed to be issued a code which identifies them (though just by the cookie). So when the user creates a movie, the cookie that was created is stored in the owner field.

So two problems:

1. Using the .empty? method when I delete the cookie from the browser, returns a undefined methodempty?' for nil:NilClass`

2. When I do have a cookie already set in the browser, and then create a movie, the cookies[:owner] value is different from the @movie.owner code?

Answer 1

1. cookies[:owner] will either be nil (when it hasn't been set), or a String (when it's been set). The method you're looking for is blank?, instead of empty?

   2.1.0 :003 > nil.blank?
   => true
   
   2.1.0 :005 > "i'm not blank".blank?
   => false
   
   2.1.0 :006 > "       ".blank?
   => true
   

2. As for your second problem: where do you call the save method? Do you have any callback on the Movie model that could rewrite the owner attribute?