rails-4 mongoid-4 query to find all record gives undefined method `to_sym' for nil:NilClass

Question

I am using Rails 4.1.4, Mongoid 4.0 and ruby 2.1.2p95. From my controller index that always returns undefined method `to_sym' for nil:NilClass. There are records in the database and from rails console, running thesame command @email_templates = EmailTemplate.all.to_a returns all the record in the database.

This is the controller index

 class EmailTemplatesController < ApplicationController

    def index
       @email_templates = EmailTemplate.all.to_a
    end
  end

A shortened version of the Model

  class EmailTemplate
   include Mongoid::Document
   field :name, type: String
   field :subject, type: String
   field :from, type: String
   field :to, type: String
   field :body, type: String
   field :template, type: BSON::Binary
  end

Why is this @email_templates = EmailTemplate.all.to_a working in rails console but returning error when called from the controller's index action.

Are you sure that `EmailTemplate.all` is causing the error? Is that the whole error message? BTW, Marshal is a terrible format to use for persistence, the binary format is specific to the Ruby version and there's no way to read older versions when the format changes. — mu is too short, Jul 21 '14 at 21:25
This might be a stupid question but have you tried to restart both your app and the console? — Alex C, Jul 21 '14 at 22:02
thanks @muistooshort, yes I think so, because when I un-comment that line in the controller index and remove the code that loops over it in the view, the error goes away and the index page is rendered. What would suggest **as an alternative to marshal**. — brg, Jul 21 '14 at 22:16
Thanks @AlexC. yes I restarted the app several times, but that did not fix it. — brg, Jul 21 '14 at 22:17
In this case, why not send `text` through `Liquid::Template` as needed and skip trying to persist the parsed template completely? — mu is too short, Jul 21 '14 at 22:26

brg · Accepted Answer · 2014-07-24T20:45:45.517

It turned out the problem was in my mongoid.yml not properly picking the database settings passed in via rails 4.1 secrets.yml file.

so instead of this in my config/secrets.yml file

  default: &mongodb
  mongodb_host: <%= ENV['TRG_MONGODB_HOST'] %>
  mongodb_host_port: <%= ENV['TRG_MONGODB_HOST_PORT'] %>
  mongodb_database: <%= ENV['TRG_MONGODB_DATABASE'] %>
  mongodb_db_username: <%= ENV['TRG_MONGODB_DB_USER'] %>
  mongodb_db_passowrd:  <%= ENV['TRG_MONGODB_DB_PASSWORD'] %>

  development:
    secret_key_base: xxxxxxxxyyyy
    <<: *mongodb

we have this, with the database settings keys prefixed with symbol in config/secrets.yml file like this:

  default: &mongodb
  :mongodb_host: <%= ENV['TRG_MONGODB_HOST'] %>
  :mongodb_host_port: <%= ENV['TRG_MONGODB_HOST_PORT'] %>
  :mongodb_database: <%= ENV['TRG_MONGODB_DATABASE'] %>
  :mongodb_db_username: <%= ENV['TRG_MONGODB_DB_USER'] %>
  :mongodb_db_passowrd:  <%= ENV['TRG_MONGODB_DB_PASSWORD'] %>

As you can see, I was passing the config from the secrets.yml file to the mongoid.yml or database.yml file the wrong way by using.

 Rails.application.secrets.mongodb_db_username

instead of using embedded ruby like this:

 <%= Rails.application.secrets.mongodb_db_username %>

The final uri in the mongoid.yml now looks like this:

 uri: mongodb://<%= Rails.application.secrets.mongodb_db_username %>:<%= Rails.application.secrets.mongodb_db_password %>@<%= Rails.application.secrets.mongodb_host %>:<%= Rails.application.secrets.mongodb_host_port %>/<%= Rails.application.secrets.mongodb_database %>

rails-4 mongoid-4 query to find all record gives undefined method `to_sym' for nil:NilClass

1 Answers1