From: "AN@..." <anas.marrawi@...>
Date: 2006-07-20T18:55:09+09:00
Subject: acts_as_tree

Hello,
I'm trying to create categories that have their own subcategories, and
each subcategory may have its own subcategories, .. and so on.

After some reading, I found out that the best way for creating such a
thing is to use acts_as_tree, but I didn't find any tutorial or article
that explain this in a clear way. After a lot of work I was finally
able to create categories and subcategories using the following code
explained in (Agile Web Development With Rails) book:

----------------------------------------------------------------
root = Category.create(:name => "Books")
fiction = root.children.create(:name => "Fiction")
non_fiction = root.children.create(:name => "Non Fiction")
non_fiction.children.create(:name => "Computers")
non_fiction.children.create(:name => "Science")
non_fiction.children.create(:name => "Art History")
fiction.children.create(:name => "Mystery")
fiction.children.create(:name => "Romance")
fiction.children.create(:name => "Science Fiction")
------------------------------------------------------------------

And here is the database scheme:

------------------------------------------------------------
create table categories (
id int not null auto_increment,
name varchar(100) not null,
parent_id int,
constraint fk_category foreign key (parent_id) references
categories(id),
primary key (id)
);
------------------------------------------------------------

in the model:
------------------------------------------------------------
class Category < ActiveRecord::Base
acts_as_tree :order => "name"
end
------------------------------------------------------

OK, my problem now is how to view something! Any category name, or any
subcategory or a list of categories, I tried a lot of things, like (in
the view):

---------------------------------------------------------
<ul>
<% for category in @categories %>
    <li><%= link_to h(category.title), :action => 'edit', :id =>
category %>
        <%= find_all_subcategories(category) %>
   </li>
<% end %>
</ul>
----------------------------------------------------------

But I ALWAYS and whatever I try I got this error message:

"You have a nil object when you didn't expect it!
You might have expected an instance of Array.
The error occured while evaluating nil.each

Extracted source (around line #2): <% for category in @categories %> "


What do you think the problem is?
If you know some tutorial that fully explain how to use acts_as_tree to
add and show categories that'll be great