Using time.now.advance

Rails
1

Hi,

I’m building somewhat of a billing system which needs to set next
renewal dates for each account package. In my account_package model I
have this:

class AccountPackage < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :account
belongs_to :package
belongs_to :package_cycle

before_save :set_renewal_date

def set_renewal_date
next_renewal_date =
Time.now.advance(self.package_cycle.cycle.frequency)
self.next_renewal = next_renewal_date
end
end

Basically, my Cycle model has a frequency column where I’ve stored the
strings :months => 1, :years => 1, :years => 2, etc., hoping I could
just use the value in the database within the Time.now.advance()
method. It doesn’t work. Each time the record saves, I just get the
value of Time.now in there.

Any ideas what I’m doing wrong?

2

On 21 Aug 2008, at 18:32, Jeremy wrote:

Basically, my Cycle model has a frequency column where I’ve stored the
strings :months => 1, :years => 1, :years => 2, etc., hoping I could
just use the value in the database within the Time.now.advance()
method. It doesn’t work. Each time the record saves, I just get the
value of Time.now in there.

You can’t pass a string, you need to pass a hash. One way of doing
that would be to use the activerecord’s serialize method so that the
Cycle model would actually store the hash

Fred

3

Thanks, Fred. That makes sense. I’m not getting the following:

undefined method `[]’ for :“months => 1”:Symbol

What am I doing now?

On Aug 21, 1:50 pm, Frederick C. [email protected]

4

On 21 Aug 2008, at 18:59, Jeremy [email protected] wrote:

Thanks, Fred. That makes sense. I’m not getting the following:

undefined method `[]’ for :“months => 1”:Symbol

It’s expecting a hash that it can do [] on but you appear to be
passing a symbol

Fred

5

I found a way to do it…

I added a frequency_unit column to my Cycles model. Now I store the
string “years” or “months” or whatever in frequency_unit and store 1,
2, 3, etc. in frequency. I can then use this code, which works the
way I want it to:

before_save :set_renewal_date

def set_renewal_date
next_renewal_date =
Time.now.advance(self.package_cycle.cycle.frequency_unit.to_sym =>
self.package_cycle.cycle.frequency.to_i)
self.next_renewal = next_renewal_date
end

6

So I have a text field on a page that I enter in something for that
frequency. I now have the model set to serialize :frequency. What do
I need to type into the text field so that this will work? Sorry to
be a bother, just at a loss and can’t figure it out…

On Aug 21, 2:20 pm, Frederick C. [email protected]