User_id is nil on rails association - ruby-on-rails

Question

I have a user model and a shout model. I am trying to have a user be associated with a shout. I did not make this association upon creation of the shouts table so I had to run a new migration. Below is my table, the models of each, and the output when from my console I run a command to try and find the user_id of a shout. Can you see what I am doing wrong?
schema:
create_table "shouts", force: :cascade do |t|
t.string "title"
t.text "description"
t.integer "user_id"
end
add_index "shouts", ["user_id"], name: "index_shouts_on_user_id"
create_table "users", force: :cascade do |t|
t.string "email", null: false
t.string "password_digest", null: false
t.datetime "created_at", null: false
t.datetime "updated_at", null: false
t.string "username"
end
User Model:
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
validates :email, presence: true, uniqueness: true
validates :password_digest, presence: true
has_many :shouts
end
Shout Model:
class Shout < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :user
end
Shout Controller:
class ShoutsController < ApplicationController
def new
#new_shout = Shout.new
end
def create
#new_shout = Shout.new(shouts_params)
if #new_shout.user_id == nil
render new_shout_path
elsif #new_shout.save
redirect_to dashboard_path
else
render new_shout_path
end
end
private
def shouts_params
params.require(:shout).permit(:title, :description, :user_id)
end
end
Some test code:
> Shout.find(4)
> #<Shout id: 4, title: "four", description: "four", user_id: nil>
Creating an instance of user from the console, working:
> User.first.shouts.create(title: 'four', description: 'four')
>[["title", "four"], ["description", "four"], ["user_id", 1]
Migration file:
class AddUserRefToShouts < ActiveRecord::Migration
def change
add_reference :shouts, :user, index: true, foreign_key: true
end
end

Answer 1

Here are a couple admittedly hacky options (but they'll work) if you don't want to follow the approach suggested in the comments. You could pass the user_id as a hidden field so it'll be included in the params or you can expressly set it in the create action.
If you want to pass as a hidden field, on your shout form add:
<%= f.hidden_field :user_id, value: current_user.id %>
Alternatively, if you want to handle in your create action:
def create
#shout = Shout.new(shout_params)
#shout.user_id = current_user.id
#shout.save
end