Rails twitter gem causing error Missing required parameter: status

Question

I am using twitter gem with rails in order to retrive the user timeline and post an update:

  def index
    @tweets = Twitter.home_timeline
  end

  def tweet
    text = params[:text]
    Twitter.update(text) unless text = nil
  end

The view which sends the request via jquery/ajax:

<input type="text" class="tweet-box" placeholder="tweet something" />
<input type="submit" class="tweet-button" value="tweet" />

<script type="text/javascript">
    $(".tweet-button").on('click',function(e){
        e.preventDefault();
        $.post('/twitters/tweet', { text: $(".tweet-box").val() });
    });
</script>

finally the routes:

get "twitters/index"
post "twitters/tweet"

getting the timeline works fine, however when trying to send the update, i get this error:

Missing required parameter: status

What is the problem?

Thanks

Answer 1

"unless text = nil"

This is setting text TO nil, so there is no text being passed into update()

A good habit is to always put the literal on the left:

nil == text

That way if you for get == and do = it will fail because you can't assign to a literal.

try either "unless text == nil" or "unless text.nil?"