Call back to Application Controller error - NameError (undefined local variable or method - ruby-on-rails-3

Question

I'm upgrading an application from Rails 2 to 3. I use a Rights and Role approach for authentication that worked fine under Rails 2. In my Application Controller (application.rb) I have:
class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
def check_authentication
unless session[:user]
session[:intended_resource] = request.request_uri
session[:intended_action] = action_name
session[:intended_controller] = controller_name
redirect_to :controller => "sessions", :action => "new"
return false
end
end
def check_authorization
user = User.find(session[:user])
unless user.roles.detect{|role|
role.rights.detect{|right|
right.action == action_name && right.controller == self.class.controller_path
}
}
flash[:notice] = "You are not authorized to view the page you requested"
request.env["HTTP_REFERER"] ? (redirect_to :back) : (redirect_to :controller => "sessions", :action => "new")
return false
end
end
end
In my other controllers I've included a before filter.
before_filter :check_authentication,:check_authorization
I'm getting the following error message, for example, when I go to my Dashboard Controller.
NameError (undefined local variable or method `check_authentication' for DashboardController:0x0000010291a0c0):
Is there something else I need to change or add to make this work in Rails 3?
Thanks,
Aaron

Answer 1

Make sure that your DashboardController is inheriting from ApplicationController i.e. DashboardController < ApplicationController.

Answer 2

Problem solved. Somehow during my upgrade I had a file named application.rb and application_controller.rb in my controllers folder. Both were defined as ApplicationController < ActionController::Base. The code for my "real" Application Controller was sitting in application.rb and not in application_controller.rb, which was empty. A simple copy-n-paste and things were fine. I don't know how that happened. Running the rails_upgrade plugin didn't go as smoothly as planned.