# Accessing items when using Enumerable **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [July 4, 2007, 2:43am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/accessing-items-when-using-enumerable/108493 "2007-07-04T02:43:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![iceninejon](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/i/9fc348/32.png) [@iceninejon](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/iceninejon)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2007, 2:43am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/accessing-items-when-using-enumerable/108493/1 "2007-07-04T02:43:50Z")
I’m a RoR newbie and am trying to use the paginating\_find plug-in ([Welcome cardboardrocket.com - BlueHost.com](http://cardboardrocket.com/pages/paginating_find)) for pagination. Everything works fine but after my .find() call, I want to add additional data to my object that’s not part of the data model (the attributes are however defined using attr\_accessor). However, it doesn’t seem to work. Can someone tell me what I’m doing wrong? Here’s what I’m trying: bookmarks\_controller.rb @bookmarks = Bookmark.find(:all, :conditions =\> “private = ‘#{false}’ OR user\_id = ‘#{session[:user\_id]}’”, :order =\> “created\_at desc”, :group =\> “url”, :page =\> {:size =\> 20, :current =\> params[:page], :first =\> 1}) 1. I then try to add some additional data to @bookmarks: for bookmark in @bookmarks bookmark.test = “test” end (in my Bookmark model, I have “attr\_accessor :test” since “test” is not part of the database model). 1. When I put a breakpoint in my view and using breakpointer, write out the @bookmarks variable, I get: #\“2007-06-02 18:02:46”, “title”=\>“Bluecross”, “private”=\>“0”, “url”=\>“[http://www.bluecross.com](http://www.bluecross.com)”, “id”=\>“11”, “description”=\>“Another health care company that my former employer used.”, “user\_id”=\>“1”, “created\_at”=\>“2007-06-02 18:02:46”}, @test=“test”, @num\_duplicates=1\> Notice how there’s an @attributes in there which has all the data for my bookmark variable and then outside of it, is the @test. This obviously doesn’t work when I iterate through @bookmarks in my view (it only picks up what’s in the @attributes for each bookmark). How can I get it so the test attribute is included with the rest of the attributes? I asked someone on a blog and he replied “the data is stored in ‘results’ variable within PagingEnumerator, hence you can write an accessor method to iterate through the collection and retain new values (for example, write a each\_set method).” but I don’t know how to do that. Any help is much appreciated. Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![iceninejon](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/i/9fc348/32.png) [@iceninejon](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/iceninejon)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2007, 7:50am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/accessing-items-when-using-enumerable/108493/2 "2007-07-04T07:50:17Z")
Icenine Jon wrote: > user\_id = ‘#{session[:user\_id]}’", :order =\> “created\_at desc”, :group > > Notice how there’s an @attributes in there which has all the data for my > bookmark variable and then outside of it, is the @test. This obviously > doesn’t work when I iterate through @bookmarks in my view (it only picks > up what’s in the @attributes for each bookmark). How can I get it so the > test attribute is included with the rest of the attributes? I asked > someone on a blog and he replied “the data is stored in ‘results’ > variable within PagingEnumerator, hence you can write an accessor method > to iterate through the collection and retain new values (for example, > write a each\_set method).” but I don’t know how to do that. If you want to force test inside the @attributes hash you can do bookmark[:test] = “test”, but are you using some sort of scaffold that only allows AR attributes to be displayed in views? – We develop, watch us RoR, in numbers too big to ignore. ---
**Author:** ![iceninejon](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/i/9fc348/32.png) [@iceninejon](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/iceninejon)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2007, 8:44am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/accessing-items-when-using-enumerable/108493/3 "2007-07-04T08:44:37Z")
Mark Reginald J. wrote: > Icenine Jon wrote: > > > user\_id = ‘#{session[:user\_id]}’", :order =\> “created\_at desc”, :group > > > > Notice how there’s an @attributes in there which has all the data for my > > bookmark variable and then outside of it, is the @test. This obviously > > doesn’t work when I iterate through @bookmarks in my view (it only picks > > up what’s in the @attributes for each bookmark). How can I get it so the > > test attribute is included with the rest of the attributes? I asked > > someone on a blog and he replied “the data is stored in ‘results’ > > variable within PagingEnumerator, hence you can write an accessor method > > to iterate through the collection and retain new values (for example, > > write a each\_set method).” but I don’t know how to do that. > > If you want to force test inside the @attributes hash you can > do bookmark[:test] = “test”, but are you using some sort of > scaffold that only allows AR attributes to be displayed in views? > > – > We develop, watch us RoR, in numbers too big to ignore. Thanks for responding Mark. What’s an AR attribute (sorry, I’m not fully up on the terminology yet)? My view has: \<% for bookmark in @bookmarks %\> bookmark.test \<% end %\> In my controller, I created a new variable @bookmarks2 and set it to @bookmarks2 = @bookmarks.to\_a. When I do that and then loop through @bookmarks2 and adding bookmark2.test = “test” to each element and then run that through my view, it works fine (in other words, @bookmarks which is part of the enumerator won’t display it but @bookmarks2 which is a simple array will). Any ideas why? ---
**Author:** ![iceninejon](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/i/9fc348/32.png) [@iceninejon](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/iceninejon)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2007, 9:23am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/accessing-items-when-using-enumerable/108493/4 "2007-07-04T09:23:27Z")
Icenine Jon wrote: > Thanks for responding Mark. What’s an AR attribute (sorry, I’m not > fully up on the terminology yet)? My view has: ActiveRecord attribute, a database-backed attribute, as opposed to a memory-backed attr\_accessor Ruby attribute. > \<% for bookmark in @bookmarks %\> > > bookmark.test \<% end %\> > > In my controller, I created a new variable @bookmarks2 and set it to > @bookmarks2 = @bookmarks.to\_a. When I do that and then loop through > @bookmarks2 and adding bookmark2.test = “test” to each element and then > run that through my view, it works fine (in other words, @bookmarks > which is part of the enumerator won’t display it but @bookmarks2 which > is a simple array will). Any ideas why? I think what’s happening is that the paging\_find plugin retrieves the page of objects from the DB every time you use each/for to iterate over them. So you’re making the change to one set of bookmarks, and then retrieving a new unchanged set when you do your view iteration. Use of to\_a may be the best solution. – We develop, watch us RoR, in numbers too big to ignore.