Accessing one controller variable in another controller in Rails

Question

I have a C programming background and I am learning Ruby/Rails for a side project. Currently I am struggling to understand how the scoping of variables works. Here is an example

Answer 1

You have to initialize @current_user on each request, not only after the user logs in. Controller instance variables do not persist across requests.

Here's a common way to do this:

1. Store the user ID in the session.
2. Create a "before" filter in ApplicationController that retrieves the user ID from the session and initializes the instance variable.