# @request et al not available in controller initialize?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/request-et-al-not-available-in-controller-initialize/93889>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [November 12, 2005, 12:49pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/request-et-al-not-available-in-controller-initialize/93889 "2005-11-12T12:49:41Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![cool\_screen\_name900](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/c68b51/32.png) [@cool\_screen\_name900](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/cool_screen_name900)\
**Post date:** [November 12, 2005, 12:49pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/request-et-al-not-available-in-controller-initialize/93889/1 "2005-11-12T12:49:41Z")

</div>

Is @request and the other controller attributes not  
available in a controller’s initialize function? What  
I’m trying to do:

```
def initialize
	super

	server_name = @request.env["SERVER_NAME"]

	@site=Site.find :first,
		:conditions => ["server_name=?", server_name]
end

```

It gives this error:

You have a nil object when you didn’t expect it!  
The error occured while evaluating nil.env

thanks  
csn

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![cool\_screen\_name900](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/c68b51/32.png) [@cool\_screen\_name900](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/cool_screen_name900)\
**Post date:** [November 12, 2005, 12:49pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/request-et-al-not-available-in-controller-initialize/93889/2 "2005-11-12T12:49:47Z")

</div>

You should probably use a before\_filter for this…

before\_filter do |controller|  
server\_name = controller.request.env[“SERVER\_NAME”]  
@site = Site.find\_by\_server\_name(server\_name)  
end