How to delete / destroy user in rails app from database?

Question

I recently watched the railscast episode #250 Authentication from Scratch (revised) and I have the signup / login / logout actions working. However I am working on creating an action to delete a user from the database, but I am currently experiencing some errors when I try to delete a user.

The users_controller.rb delete / destroy actions look like the following,

def delete
    # the below line calls the destroy method / action
    self.destroy
  end

  def destroy
    session[:user_id] = nil
    # @user = User.find(params[:id])
    @user.destroy
    # User.find(parmas[:id]).destroy
    # the below line didn't delete the current user :(
    # @user = User.destroy
    redirect_to :controller=>'users', :action => 'new'
  end

The error message I'm getting in the browser when I try to delete a user looks like the following.

The page that contains the delete link looks like the following, index.html.erb

<h1>Welcome 
    <% if current_user %>
        <%= current_user.email %>
    <% end %>
</h1>

<p>You have <%= current_user.credit %> credits.</p>

<!-- http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5607155/ -->
<%= link_to('Delete your account', :controller => 'users', :action => 'destroy') %>

routes.rb

Rails.application.routes.draw do

  # the below generated route is not necessary
  # get 'sessions/new'

  # delete user route
  #get 'delete' => 'users#delete'

  # shortened routes, per railscast comment
  get 'signup' => 'users#new'
  get 'login' => 'sessions#new'
  get 'logout' => 'sessions#destroy'

  # get 'signup', to: 'users#new', :as 'signup'
  # get 'login', to: 'sessions#new', :as 'login'
  # get 'logout', to: 'sessions#destroy', :as 'logout'

  resources :users
  resources :sessions

  root to: 'users#new'

  # get 'users/new'

  # the below line specifies JSON as the default API format
  namespace :api, defaults: {format: 'json'} do
    namespace :v1 do
      resources :users
    end
  end

Answer 1

It stands to reason you're getting a NoMethodError, since you've never set the @user variable, that line is commented out:

 def destroy
    session[:user_id] = nil
    # @user = User.find(params[:id]) <-- Commenting out this line was your problem
    @user.destroy

Changing to

 def destroy
    session[:user_id] = nil
    @user = User.find(params[:id])
    @user.destroy

You should be good to go.

EDIT: one thing you'd probably want to do is change from using the old style of link_to, specifying the controller and action, and change to the new style, using route helpers . In this case, you'd use, i believe, link_to 'Delete your account', current_user, :method => :delete , but you can check by running rake routes , where it will list the helpers available based on your routes.rb file.

Answer 2

Well, I think you should make things a bit simpler and start from the dummiest thing, that works. First of all, if you use your controller as a resource, there would not be a delete action there, only destroy.

def destroy
  User.find(params[:id]).destroy
  session[:user_id] = nil
  redirect_to new_user_path
end

PS once again, I assume that you have set resources :users in your routes.rb .
If you have a bunch of get|post|put|delete routes instead, just make sure you point the redirect correctly.