Rails: combining multiple find requests

Question

What I want to do is something like this:

searchid = 4

while searchid != -1

  @a += A.find(searchid)
  @b = B.find(searchid)
  searchid = @b.parentid
end

The problem being the line

@a += A.find(searchid) 

The error being something like

NoMethodError: undefined method `+' for #<A:0x173f9a0>

So, how do you combine multiple 'find' requests?

Answer 1

You have to initialize @a = [] as an array before the += .

searchid = 4
@a = []
while searchid != -1

  @a += A.find(searchid)
  @b = B.find(searchid)
  searchid = @b.parentid
end

You can combine them like:

searchid = 4
@a = []
while searchid != -1

  @a += A.find(searchid)
  @a += B.find(searchid)
  searchid = @a.last.parentid
end

Answer 2

Got it to work (with help). Did the following:

@a = []

with

@a << A.find_by_something(something)

seems to have worked. Also using @a.compact! to get rid of the null entries.

Thanks for all the help :)