issue with if-else in a view - ruby-on-rails

Question

I am following the railstutorial and now got into the point where header will change dynamically depending on whether the user is logged in or not, using a conditional dropdown as shown below
<header class="navbar navbar-fixed-top navbar-inverse">
<div class="container">
<%= link_to "sample app", root_path, id: "logo" %>
<nav>
<ul class="nav navbar-nav navbar-right">
<li><%= link_to "Home", root_path %></li>
<li><%= link_to "Help", help_path %></li>
<% if logged_in? %>
<li><%= link_to "Users", '#' %></li>
<li class="dropdown">
<a href="#" class="dropdown-toggle" data-toggle="dropdown">
Account <b class="caret"></b>
</a>
<ul class="dropdown-menu">
<li><%= link_to "Profile", current_user %></li>
<li><%= link_to "Settings", '#' %></li>
<li class="divider"></li>
<li>
<%= link_to "Log out", logout_path, method: "delete" %>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<% else %>
<li><%= link_to "Log in", login_path %></li>
<% end %>
</ul>
</nav>
And here is the logged_in? method defined in the helper
module SessionsHelper
# Logs in the given user.
def log_in(user)
session[:user_id] = user.id
end
# Returns the current logged-in user (if any).
def current_user
#current_user ||= User.find_by(id: session[:user_id])
end
# Returns true if the user is logged in, false otherwise.
def logged_in?
!current_user.nil?
end
end
For some reason this is not working, although I have copied the tutorial exactly. I am not sure if the line (if_logged_in?) is not being called or it is called but returns false. The else block gets executed by the way
I was wondering if there is anyway I can check if the method defined in the helper (logged_in?) is working and gets called correctly? Something like printing an output from the method itself?

Answer 1

A quick way to check whether that method's being called, and what's happening in it, is to throw a debug statement in there, like so:
def logged_in?
Rails.logger.debug("\n\n *** logged_in? #{current_user}")
!current_user.nil?
end
You load the page and then look at your development log and see if that line is there, and whether the user exists.
For more details about debugging, see http://guides.rubyonrails.org/debugging_rails_applications.html.
Hope that helps.