Rails - Aug 2007 - new to rails, quick (hopefully simple) question

I am brand new to rails and I am attempting to make my first web app.

I have quickly run into my first problem however that I can''t seem to
get by.  It seems like it would be easy to get around (with my
knowledge of other languages besides ruby), but I can''t seem to get by
it.

Right now, I have a note model that contains attributes, :title
(string)  :content (text) and :tags (string)

In my models/note.rb file, all I have is this:

class Note < ActiveRecord::Base
  validates_presence_of :title, :content
end

What I want to have done with my tag field though is a different
matter.  What I want to happen is that if the tag field is left blank,
a place-holding "@untagged" string would be put into the :tags string.

What I have attempted to do is this in the models/note.rb:

if :tags.nil?
  :tags => ''@untagged''
end

However, I get a syntax error.

app/models/note.rb:3: syntax error, unexpected ''='', expecting
kEND
    :tags = ''@untagged''

How should I go about solving this problem?  Should I put this in a
different part of the application to do the comparison?

Thanks for your help in advance!


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On 8/29/07, telefauna <mika.adam-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
>
> Right now, I have a note model that contains attributes, :title
> (string)  :content (text) and :tags (string)
>
> In my models/note.rb file, all I have is this:
>
> class Note < ActiveRecord::Base
>   validates_presence_of :title, :content
> end
>
> What I want to have done with my tag field though is a different
> matter.  What I want to happen is that if the tag field is left blank,
> a place-holding "@untagged" string would be put into the :tags
string.
>
> What I have attempted to do is this in the models/note.rb:
>
> if :tags.nil?
>   :tags => ''@untagged''
> end
where is that statement? Is that in a method?  Just inserting that
statement into your model without placing it in a method makes no
sense.  And the format for variable assignment is:

my_variable = ''some value''

you normally use the => symbol when defining a hash
>
> However, I get a syntax error.
>
> app/models/note.rb:3: syntax error, unexpected ''='',
expecting kEND
>     :tags = ''@untagged''
>
> How should I go about solving this problem?  Should I put this in a
> different part of the application to do the comparison?
you could put this into a before_save method in your model such as follows:

   def before_save
     self.tags= ''@untagged'' if self.tags.blank?
   end

or you could alter your database schema so that the default value for
tags is always ''@untagged'' using the following statement:

alter table <my_table> change tags tags varchar(255) default
''@untagged''

although the first method is preferred since the second may not
exactly be database agnostic and might not work in a migration either.

Adam

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> where is that statement? Is that in a method?  Just inserting that
> statement into your model without placing it in a method makes no
> sense.  And the format for variable assignment is:
>
> my_variable = ''some value''
>
> you normally use the => symbol when defining a hash
I''m sorry, I forgot to say that I had the statement within a validate
method.  And I accidentally left in the => instead of just the = when
I  was playing around with the syntax, trying to get the thing to
work.
> you could put this into a before_save method in your model such as follows:
>
>    def before_save
>      self.tags= ''@untagged'' if self.tags.blank?
>    end
That worked really nicely.  Thanks for your help!


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