wrong number of arguments (2 for 1) - Rails - ruby-on-rails

Question

I am really really stuck and annoyed with this right now.
I am running Rails 2.3.5
My View/pages/customers.html.erb simply has:
<% form_tag do %>
First Name
<%= text_field_tag :firstName, params[:firstName] %>
Last Name
<%= text_field_tag :lastName, params[:lastName] %>
<%= submit_tag "Enter" %>
<%end%>
My Models/customer.rb simply has:
class Customer < ActiveRecord::Base
attr_accessible :firstName, :lastName
end
My Controller/pages_controller has
class PagesController < ApplicationController
def custs
#cust = Customer.new(params[:firstName], params[:lastName])
#cust.save
end
end
so as you see I am just trying to enter two fields from front end and then save them to the DB. However, whenever i load my page it give me error:
wrong number of arguments (2 for 1)
pages_controller.rb:3:in new'
pages_controller.rb:3:incusts'
weird thing is that when I use the sandbox script/console I am able to insert data fine.
What is going on here? please someone explain!

Answer 1

http://apidock.com/rails/ActiveRecord/Base/new/class here is a little explanation of the new function. The crucial part - "pass a hash with key names matching the associated table column name". Instead of #cust = Customer.new(params[:firstName], params[:lastName]) you should have #cust = Customer.new(:firstName => params[:firstName], :lastName => params[:lastName]). This should do the trick.

Answer 2

The quick fix is to change line 3 of pages_controller to this:
#cust = Customer.new({:firstName => params[:firstName], :lastName => params[:lastName]})
Without proper keys Rails has no idea what values you are passing and in what order.
The bigger problem seems to be that your form is not setup properly. You might have a great reason for it, but if not, I would recommend creating a blank Rails project, and using generate scaffold to see how a normal Rails form/controller is setup.

Answer 3

Since new takes a hash, from which attributes will be set where the hash has the corresponding keys, Customer.new(params) should be sufficient, shouldn't it? Unless params also has keys for attributes that you don't want to be set in this case, I suppose.
Obviously your sample code may have been edited-down to better present the problem, but as shown, the #new/#save pair can usually be condensed down to Customer#create(params)