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**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [April 2, 2007, 6:33am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/accessing-another-table-in-a-different-rhtml-file/90831 "2007-04-02T06:33:06Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1
**Author:**  [@Roshini](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Roshini)\
**Post date:** [April 2, 2007, 6:33am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/accessing-another-table-in-a-different-rhtml-file/90831/1 "2007-04-02T06:33:06Z")
Hi Everybody,
I am trying to access the elements of a different table within another
tables layout file. Here is basically what I am trying to do:
\<% if table1.ITEM\_ID == table2.ID %\>
\<%=h table1.ITEM\_ID %\>
\<% end %\>
But it gives me an error for table2. Here is the error I get:
“undefined local variable or method”
I’m very new to RoR and would appreciate any help.
Thanks,
Roshini
---
**Author:**  [@Roshini](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Roshini)\
**Post date:** [April 2, 2007, 1:01pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/accessing-another-table-in-a-different-rhtml-file/90831/2 "2007-04-02T13:01:57Z")
Hi
I’m new to rails too.
but have you assign value to table2 in your controller? (@table2 =
something).
burlight
---
**Author:**  [@Roshini](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Roshini)\
**Post date:** [April 3, 2007, 8:34am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/accessing-another-table-in-a-different-rhtml-file/90831/3 "2007-04-03T08:34:26Z")
Well for now, I have it in a for loop that goes through the entire
table2 db to match and see if the same ID exists in both tables. But,
everytime I make any reference to table2 even in the for loop, it
throws the same error "“undefined local variable or method”
---
**Author:**  [@Roshini](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Roshini)\
**Post date:** [April 3, 2007, 10:25am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/accessing-another-table-in-a-different-rhtml-file/90831/4 "2007-04-03T10:25:44Z")
Okay…but how would I access the @cars in the UserController?
---
**Author:**  [@Roshini](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Roshini)\
**Post date:** [April 3, 2007, 10:51am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/accessing-another-table-in-a-different-rhtml-file/90831/5 "2007-04-03T10:51:58Z")
you have to poulate the @cars variable in the UserController, just
like you did with @users:
def UserController \< ApplicationController
```
def list
@cars = Car.list
@users = User.list
end
```
end
simple as that. the above is only pseudo code obviously, as you did
not give any code example what you do in your controller to find your
desired dataset.
---
**Author:**  [@Roshini](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Roshini)\
**Post date:** [April 3, 2007, 9:11am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/accessing-another-table-in-a-different-rhtml-file/90831/6 "2007-04-03T09:11:38Z")
Hi, you should be able to easily retrieve values from other tables.
For example, if you have have the following:
Example models:
class User \< ActiveRecord::Base
def self.list
```
User.find( :all )
```
end
end
class Car \< ActiveRecord::Base
```
def self.list
Car.find( :all )
end
```
end
Example controllers:
def CarController \< ApplicationController
```
def list
@cars = Car.list
end
```
end
class UserController \< ApplicationController
```
def list
@users = User.list
end
```
end
Now. in your views, you can easily reference both the @users and @cars
instance variables within your views. Please remember that each model
represents an OO view of the underlying table (i.e. cars and users
tables). Again, this is just an example and you can customize it to
do whatever you like. For example, you might want to get a subset of
the available users or retrieve a user by an attribute. If this is
the case, then you can easily define the appropriate method(s) within
the controller and/or the model to achieve this goal. Well, I hope
that this helps and I wish you the best of luck.
-Conrad