rails “undefined method” when invoking a helper method from the view

Question

I want to get the gender of a person from a helper method like so:

sportists_helper.rb

def sportists_gender
  gender = self.gender

  if gender == "1"
    "Male"
  elsif gender == "2"
    "Female"
  end
end

and then print it out in a view: <%= sportists_gender %>, but this gives me undefined method 'gender' error, why is that?

Dave · Accepted Answer · 2016-01-20T06:42:54.420

2

Assuming you have Person model. here is an example:

Helper:

def sportists_gender(person)
  gender = person.gender

  if gender == "1"
    "Male"
  elsif gender == "2"
    "Female"
  end
end

Call From View.erb:

 <% @person = Person.first %> // any object according to your view.
 <%= sportists_gender(@person) %> // display result.

edited Jan 20 '16 at 06:42

answered Dec 07 '14 at 13:05

Dave

And to clarify, the reason your original code crashes is because the helper doesn't know what `self` is; helpers don't somehow get access to the model object for free. – chrismanderson Jan 19 '16 at 16:21
@Xeen, you may also want to rethink the design a bit. Would it make more sense to have this method in the Person model itself instead of a view helper? – Rahul Jan 19 '16 at 16:51

1 Answers1