Accessing a varable declared in a controller from a model

Question

I'm using the facebooker gem which creates a variable called facebook_session in the controller scope (meaning when I can call facebook_session.user.name from the userscontroller section its okay). However when I'm rewriting the full_name function (located in my model) i can't access the facebook_session variable.

Answer 1

You'll have to pass the value into your model at some point, then store it if you need to access it regularly.
Models aren't allowed to pull data from controllers -- it would break things in console view, unit testing and in a few other situations.

The simplest answer is something like this:

class User
    attr_accessor :facebook_name
    before_create :update_full_name

    def calculated_full_name
       facebook_name || "not sure"
    end

    def update_full_name
       full_name ||= calculated_full_name
    end
end


class UsersController
    def create
       @user = User.new params[:user]
       @user.facebook_name = facebook_session.user.name

       @user.save
    end
end