Rails 4

First, have you changed all your attr_accessible s?

Take them out of your model and instead do this in the appropriate controller

  def profiles_params
      params.require(user).permit(:user_id, :friend_id, :users, :friend, :state, :first_name, :last_name, :user_friendship,       :full_name, :album, :albums_thumbnail, :title)
  end

(using whatever parameters you're currently working with)

And then earlier in the controller, if you have anything that has, for example in the Statuses controller,

def create 
 @status = current_user.statuses.new(params[:status])

you need to change it to

def create 
 @status = current_user.statuses.new(status_params)

then at the bottom, it would be

def status_params
  params.require(status).permit(:content)
end

So for every model, if you have attr_accessible, you need to get rid of it in the model and do this above set-up in the controller instead.

That might make your user_id appear. It would be a string of numbers.

I'm not sure if that would fix first_name or if that is a separate issue that you're having. So, if you could please post a link to your project on github, that would be super helpful.

If you haven't been doing the github thing, you should :) Makes it easy to share stuff and for others to touch up your code.

Hi again! Got your Github. Sent you a pull request. It should be pretty easy to merge it. Click the green buttons and follow the instructions :) I love Github.

Basically there were 2 kinks:

1. You over-coded lol Super close though. The strong params (that def status_params stuff) only needs to be in 1 place: the controller. Also, each controller only needs, typically, one of those chunks of code. So status has status_params and user has user_params.

2. You need to always update your params as you create new fields. So your status_params that was in your status controller was a little behind your code. It only allowed :content and :name through. But you don't have a :name field anymore. You have :first_name, :last_name, :profile_name, :full_name

So those need to be added into that set of brackets and the old :name field comes out.

The point of the strong params is to only allow into your database the things you want. It can work against you though if you forget to update it.

I think it should all be working for you now :) Just wanted to explain what I had shifted around.

If you like, you can change .first_name to .profile_name or probably .full_name.

Keep at 'er! Promise it gets easier as you get over this hump setting up all the user profile stuff.

Thanks - weirdest thing now happening - I can now link <%= status.user.full_name %> in show.html but not index.html (same with status.user.first_name)

-----------------UPDATE---------------------------------- NEVERMIND! I had old statuses without a user attached.

HOORAY! IT WORKS!

My rails is rusty and I don't have a prescribed fix for ya off hand, but I can tell you that none of the properties are being set on your status model.

For example:

<% class Status; attr_accessor :foo; end; status = Status.new %>
<%= status %>
<%= status.foo.nil? %>

Outputs:

#<Status:0x00000000bbb6b0>
true