How can I comments to my posts?

Question

I am attempting to add the ability for users to add comments to posts on my rails site.

I have a Posts table and a Users table in my database. I'm using resourceful routes to display individual posts on the 'show' action of my Posts controller. I want to be able to have a comment box show up under the post that the user can enter a comment into, then click submit and have it create the comment.

I tried making a model for comments, giving them a belongs_to relationship for both user and post. I also added the has_many relationship to the user and post models. I then tried to have a Comment Controller use a 'create' action in order to process a form on each posts' 'show' action.

I am running into the issue of not being able to get the post_id to inject into the new comment. I can get the user_id by grabbing it from the user's session, but the only thing passed to the 'create' action on the Comments Controller is the actual text of the comment through the form.

Is this a good way of going about adding this feature? There must be a better way of doing it, or maybe I'm just missing something.

My Posts Controller 'show' action:

#PostsController.rb

def show
  @post = Post.where(:id => params[:id]).first
  if @post.nil?
    flash[:error] = "Post does not exist"
    redirect_to(root_path)
  end
  @comment = Comment.new
end

The form on the 'show' view for the 'show' action on PostsController:

#views/posts/show.html.erb

<%= form_for @comment do |f| %>
  <%= f.text_area(:content, :size => '20x10', :class => 'textarea') %>
  <%= f.submit('Create Post', class: 'button button-primary') %>
<% end %>

My Comments Controller 'create' action:

#CommentsController.rb

def create
  @comment = Comment.new(params.require(:comment).permit(:content, :post_id, :user_id))
  @comment.user_id = session[:user_id]
  #Need to set post_id here somehow
  if @comment.valid?
    @comment.save
    flash[:success] = "Comment added successfully."
    redirect_to(post_path(@comment.post))
  else
    @error = @comment.errors.full_messages.to_s
    @error.delete! '[]'
    flash.now[:error] = @error
    render('posts/show')
  end
end

My Post model:

class Post < ApplicationRecord
  belongs_to :subject
  belongs_to :user
  has_many :comments

  validates :title, :presence => true,
                    :length => {:within => 4..75}


  validates :content, :presence => true,
                      :length => {:within => 20..1000}
end

My Comment model:

class Comment < ApplicationRecord
  belongs_to :user
  belongs_to :post

  validates :content, :presence => true,
                      :length => {:within => 6..200}

end

Are you following any tutorials? Please update your question with posts and comments model — Hizqeel
You are getting there, it's not that hard, try to dig a little deeper in online resource, you will find it's quite easy. By the way, @post = Post.where(:id => params[:id]).first >>>> you can use .find with ID, .find — tkhuynh
@Hizqeel I used a tutorial on Lynda for my initial app creation, but I can't find any resources online for how to add comments. I added the code for my models. — Kecoey
@Kecoey have a look at it hope this solves your issue. Right after Adding a Second model guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html — Hizqeel
@Kecoey If that solves your problem than let me know or vice versa — Hizqeel

TerryS TerryS · Accepted Answer · 2017-02-17T22:48:11

In your post controller show action, make the new comment belong to the post

def show
  @post = Post.where(:id => params[:id]).first
  if @post.nil?
    flash[:error] = "Post does not exist"
    redirect_to(root_path)
  end
  @comment = @post.comments.new # <--- here's the change
end

Then add the post_id field to the form as a hidden field

<%= form_for @comment do |f| %>
  <%= f.hidden_field :post_id %> 
  <%= f.text_area(:content, :size => '20x10', :class => 'textarea') %>
  <%= f.submit('Create Post', class: 'button button-primary') %>
<% end %>

And you should be good to go without changing the comment controller create action

How can I comments to my posts?

1 Answers