# Unable to get past Tutorial 1 in RubyOnRails **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [May 7, 2006, 7:16pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/unable-to-get-past-tutorial-1-in-rubyonrails/94573 "2006-05-07T19:16:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Ling](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/c2a13f/32.png) [@Ling](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Ling)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2006, 7:16pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/unable-to-get-past-tutorial-1-in-rubyonrails/94573/1 "2006-05-07T19:16:58Z")
Unable to get past Tutorial 1 in RubyOnRails On 29 April 2006 I met some one in a Microsoft sponsored developersâ?? community gahering. I was told that ruby on rails is a free software, easy to use, and in no time will have my mind blown with all the wonderful prospects and possibilities. After almost a week, I am still unable to get past tutorial 1 and still unable to make any tutorials work so far. I have watched a few videos and demos from the web and I have browsed through half a book on programming ruby. I have tried > **[Radar - O’Reilly](https://www.oreilly.com/radar/?page=1)** > > Now, next, and beyond: Tracking need-to-know trends at the intersection of business and technology Encountered some problems such as â??Port 80 for Apache was being used by some other processâ?, and being unable to connect to my mySql in the local host. So I switched to a newer version of the tutorial in [http://instantrails.rubyforge.org/tutorial/index.html](http://instantrails.rubyforge.org/tutorial/index.html) I encountered similar problems. So, I moved on to try the tutorial in the site [http://rails.homelinux.org/](http://rails.homelinux.org/) for 4 days on rails. I couldnâ??t even get into day 1, so to say. I also tried the tutorial on [http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/Tutorial](http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/Tutorial) and didnâ??t get to point of â??Congratulations, youâ??re on Rails!â? I browsed through the 6 part tutorials, but didnâ??t gained much. After that I went back to [http://instantrails.rubyforge.org/tutorial/index.html](http://instantrails.rubyforge.org/tutorial/index.html) Un-installed and re-installed a few times until I came to the part where â??Editâ? a recipe was introduced and got stuck. So, I turned to the Forum for help, stating my problem as best I could. I was advised to look at the codes in the pre-installed â??cookbookâ?. I went through the processes and found that each of the step work. Since the â??Editâ? part didnâ??t work in my exercise in â??cookbook2â?, I copied the whole folder â??Appâ? from â??cookbookâ? to â??cookbook2â? so the codes are idential. I removed the database â??cookcook2â? and used the MySQL-Front 3.2 to create a new database â??cookbook2â? and check to make sure that the tables and fields resembled those of the pre-installed â??cookbookâ?. I was able to log into the website to create the required categories so that they wouldnâ??t be empty when I tried to create new recipes. Some one please help! I was able to to enter the website to create a new recipe, using [http://localhost:3000/recipe/new](http://localhost:3000/recipe/new) Problem came when I pressed to â??Createâ? button. This brought me to the url: [http://localhost:3000/recipe/list](http://localhost:3000/recipe/list) Error message: NoMethodError in Recipe#list Showing app/views/recipe/list.rhtml where line #23 raised: You have a nil object when you didn’t expect it! The error occured while evaluating nil.name Extracted source (around line #23): 20: 21: 22: 23: \<%= link\_to recipe.category.name, 24: :action =\> “list”, 25: :category =\> “#{recipe.category.name}” %\> 26: RAILS\_ROOT: ./script/…/config/… Application Trace | Framework Trace | Full Trace #{RAILS\_ROOT}/app/views/recipe/list.rhtml:23 #{RAILS\_ROOT}/app/views/recipe/list.rhtml:8 Request Parameters: None Show session dump Response Headers: {“cookie”=\>[], “Cache-Control”=\>“no-cache”} ---
**Author:** ![Ling](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/c2a13f/32.png) [@Ling](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Ling)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2006, 8:25pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/unable-to-get-past-tutorial-1-in-rubyonrails/94573/2 "2006-05-07T20:25:56Z")
the error basically means that the category is nil (i.e. cookbook.nil.name) hope this helps. ---
**Author:** ![Ling](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/c2a13f/32.png) [@Ling](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Ling)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2006, 5:32am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/unable-to-get-past-tutorial-1-in-rubyonrails/94573/3 "2006-05-08T05:32:30Z")
Yes, this is correct. Go look at your recipes table and make sure that every recipe has an assigned category. Curt ---
**Author:** ![Ling](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/c2a13f/32.png) [@Ling](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Ling)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2006, 7:19am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/unable-to-get-past-tutorial-1-in-rubyonrails/94573/4 "2006-05-08T07:19:43Z")
Curt H. wrote: > Yes, this is correct. Go look at your recipes table and make sure that > every > recipe has an assigned category. > > Curt Hi, All I found my mistake in the database setting. The field “title” in the table [recipes] doesnot allow null and I set the default to [null]. Once I corrected this mistake, the application is running. Thanks for your advice that led me me to discover the mistake. Now, I can proceed to a new tutorial. Regards, Ling. ---
**Author:** ![Ling](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/c2a13f/32.png) [@Ling](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Ling)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2006, 5:34am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/unable-to-get-past-tutorial-1-in-rubyonrails/94573/5 "2006-05-08T05:34:27Z")
Greetings. Thanks for the reply. At this stage I still donâ??t know enough of the syntax of ruby. Even though I have guessed that it means category or recipe is nil, I still donâ??t know how to resolve the problem. What puzzles me is that the codes work in â??cookbookâ? but not in â??cookbook2â?. The same problem occurred when I tried to show the list of recipes when there were none. Isnâ??t it possible to display an empty list in ruby? Can some one help? Or do I need to finish reading the book â??Programming in rubyâ? before I can work the tutorial 1? Regards, Ling. The codes behind the module â??list.rhtmlâ? is repordued as follows: \<% @recipes.each do |recipe| %\> \<% if (@category == nil) || (@category == recipe.category.name)%\> | _ **Recipe** _ | _ **Category** _ | _ **Date** _ | | \<%= link\_to recipe.title, :action =\> “show”, :id =\> recipe.id %\> ``` <%= link_to "(delete)", {:action => "delete", :id => recipe.id}, :confirm => "Really delete #{recipe.title}?" %> <%= link_to recipe.category.name, :action => "list", :category => "#{recipe.category.name}" %> <%= recipe.date %> ``` \<% end %\> \<% end %\> | cyx wrote: > the error basically means that the category is nil (i.e. > cookbook.nil.name) > > hope this helps. ---
**Author:** ![Ling](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/c2a13f/32.png) [@Ling](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Ling)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2006, 5:41am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/unable-to-get-past-tutorial-1-in-rubyonrails/94573/6 "2006-05-08T05:41:57Z")
Thanks. Curt. I have created 3 categories before I tried to create the first recipe. I chose a category from the drop down. So there was a category for the new recipe to be created. It appears that the recipe list was empty up till then. When I pressed the “Create” button, the error message as shown appeared. The same message appeared when I tried to display the recipes when there were none. So, what is the problem? Regards, Ling Curt H. wrote: > Yes, this is correct. Go look at your recipes table and make sure that > every > recipe has an assigned category. > > Curt