ID is being displayed instead of the name - ruby-on-rails

Question

I have a has_many_and_belongs_to_many relationship between items and builds.
Whatever I do, I just cannot get the name of the items to be displayed for How do I output name instead of ID? and the rest. It just displays the ID :/.
In the code provided below, the ID of the items are being displayed instead of the name of the item with that ID. How do I display the name of the item?
<% current_user.builds.each do |build| %>
<tr>
<td><%= build.hero.name%></td>
<td><%= build.user.email%></td>
<td><%= build.name %></td>
<td><%= build.starting_items %></td>
<td><%= build.early_items %></td>
<td><%= build.core_items %></td>
<td><%= build.situational_items %></td>
</tr>
<% end %>
Here is the github repo: https://github.com/imjp/DotA-Items
Basically, what I want to do is to be able to enter the id of an item in my form that later on gets displayed as the item name.
I'm not even sure if the name starting_items is the best for this, or if i should just use item_id. Because I'm planning on adding a lot of different inputs where users can enter items that need to be displayed as names.
Do you think the name starting_items is good for one of the fields, or should I use item_id?
Isn't there a way I can display the name of an item with ruby by doing something like Item.name.find(build.starting_items) or something? Since the starting_items value is an item_id?

Answer 1

When you call build.starting_items which I assume is a named scope or method call you are probably returning an array of the items themselves.
Following this it's likely that each of the items if being inspected or you are seeing the output of item.to_s.
In order to display the names of these items instead of the object id you probably wish to use something like:
<td><%= build.starting_items.map(&:name).join(', ') %></td>
This will call map on the array and pass out each of the names and then join them (you could also use .to_sentence in Rails).

Answer 2

Looking at the code you are retrieving a list of all items from the database and using them to fill a semantic form. If you take a look at the output of the items in the html it is creating a list of options with the item id as the value of the select.
When the form is saved it saves a string containing the single item ID in the database.
Firstly if you need to accept multiple items you could specify a number of has and belongs to many relationships such as:
has_and_belongs_to_many :starting_items, :join_table => "items", :foreign_key => "item_id"
You then need to make sure that the form actually passed the item id's along to ensure that all of the id's are saved correctly.

Answer 3

Ok from re-reading what you've written in response to the other answer, I now guess that the column that you're having trouble with is:
<td><%= build.starting_items %></td>
(let me know if that guess is wrong and tell me the right one).
Rails doesn't automatically know that you want to see the names of these items. It will give you exactly what you've asked for - and here you have asked for the set of actual items... not the names of the set of items. To turn these item-objects into a list of the names of the items, you must call the "name" method on each item. you can do that using the code the other answer gave:
<td><%= build.starting_items.map(&:name).join(', ') %></td>
UPDATE
ok, reading through your codebase.
The problem is that you aren't actually saving the starting_items as actual items. In the form where you create a "build", you have the starting_items field as a select-box... the select box stores a set of ids. and id is just an integer value.
nowhere in your code do you turn that set of integer id values into actual Item objects.
So... when you go to look at that list once more... it's still just a set of integers.
To see the names of the Items that have those ids, you will need to actually instantiate those Item objects... and then call the 'name' method on them eg:
<td><%= Item.find(build.starting_items).map(&:name).join(', ') %></td>
Note: you'll also need to add basic checks eg that build.starting_items is not empty, and that the ids are in fact valid ids...

Answer 4

I seem to have figured this on my own after buying a Ruby book.
First, I created a new helper method in application.rb called starting_item which goes as follows:
def starting_item(id="6")
#item = Item.find(id)
"#{#item.name}"
end
Why helper method? This way I can call this method from within my views.
Now, to display the name of the item in my index view, I do just call the method with the argument as follows: <%= starting_item(build.starting_items) %>