undefined method `admin?' for nil:NilClass
authentication, authorization, railscasts, ruby-on-rails, ruby-on-rails-3
Solution
`current_user` will be nil if a user is not logged in according to your code. So you need to do this:
<% if current_user && current_user.admin? %>
or using the `try` method Rails adds to all objects.
<% if current_user.try(:admin?) %>
Problem
I followed railscast #250 Authentication from Scratch & got everthing wworking fine. Now I'm trying to only display edit & destroy links on my index page to admin user's. I've set up mu User database with a admin boolean field & tried putting a simple if statement in the view of another model (hikingtrails) to only display certain links to admin users but I get this error when I try it out, `undefined method 'admin?' for nil:NilClass` Database Schema ``` create_table "users", :force => true do |t| t.string "email" t.string "password_digest" t.boolean "admin" t.datetime "created_at", :null => false t.datetime "updated_at", :null => false end ``` User Model ``` class User < ActiveRecord::Base attr_accessible :email, :password, :password_confirmation#, :admin validates :email, :uniqueness => true has_secure_password end ``` Application Controller ``` class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base protect_from_forgery # fetch the currently logged-in user record to see if the user is currently logged in # putting this method in ApplicationController so that it’s available in all controllers private def current_user # checks for a User based on the session’s user id that was stored when they logged in, and stores result in an instance variable @current_user ||= User.find(session[:user_id]) if session[:user_id] end # to give access to this method from all the views, the helper_method makes it a helper method helper_method :current_user # basic authorization, user must be logged in! def authorize redirect_to login_url, alert: "You must be logged in to perform this action" if current_user.nil? end end ``` views/hikingtrails/index.html.erb ``` <% if current_user.admin? %> <%= link_to t('.edit', :default => t("helpers.links.edit")), edit_hikingtrail_path(hikingtrail), :class => 'btn btn-mini' %> <%= link_to t('.destroy', :default => t("helpers.links.destroy")), hikingtrail_path(hikingtrail), :method => :delete, :data => { :confirm => t('.confirm', :default => t("helpers.links.confirm", :default => 'Are you sure?')) }, :class => 'btn btn-mini btn-danger' %> <% end %> ```