gravatar_for no method error Hartl rails chapter 7 - ruby

Question

Everything was working fine till I tried defining gravatar_for and calling it. user.email.downcase is nil class. Below is what I am working with. Let me know if you need any other information.
I see when running localhost at url http://localhost:3000/users/1
NoMethodError in Users#show
`Showing /Users/nathandewaele/Desktop/workspce/static_pages/app/views/users/show.html.erb where line #6 raised:
undefined method `downcase' for nil:NilClass`
extracted source around line 5
gravatar_id = Digest::MD5::hexdigest(user.email.downcase)
`Rails.root: /Users/nathandewaele/Desktop/workspce/static_pages
Application Trace | Framework Trace | Full Trace
app/helpers/users_helper.rb:5:in `gravatar_for'
app/views/users/show.html.erb:6:in `_app_views_users_show_html_erb___4114710587947303689_70365956197180'
Request
Parameters:
{"id"=>"1"}
Toggle session dump
Toggle env dump
Response
Headers:
None`
app/helpers/users_helper.rb
```rb
module UsersHelper
# Returns the Gravatar for the given user.
def gravatar_for(user, options = { size: 80 })
gravatar_id = Digest::MD5::hexdigest(user.email.downcase)
size = options[:size]
gravatar_url = "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/#{gravatar_id}?s=#{size}"
image_tag(gravatar_url, alt: user.name, class: "gravatar")
end
end
```
app/controllers/users_controller.rb
```ruby
class UsersController < ApplicationController
def show
#user = User.find(params[:id])
end
def new
#user = User.new
end
end
```
app/db/schema.rb
```ruby
ActiveRecord::Schema.define(version: 20171108202327) do
create_table "users", force: :cascade do |t|
t.string "name"
t.string "email"
t.datetime "created_at", null: false
t.datetime "updated_at", null: false
t.string "password_digest"
t.index ["email"], name: "index_users_on_email", unique: true
end
end
```
app/controllers/config/routes.rb
```ruby
Rails.application.routes.draw do
# get '/new', to: 'users#new'
get '/show', to: 'users#show'
get '/help', to: 'static_pages#help'
get '/about', to: 'static_pages#about'
get '/contact', to: 'static_pages#contact'
get '/signup', to: 'users#new'
resources :users
end
```
app/views/users/show.html.erb
```erb
<% provide(:title, #user.name) %>
<div class="row">
<aside class="col-md-4">
<section class="user_info">
<h1>
<%= gravatar_for #user %>
<%= #user.name %>
</h1>
</section>
</aside>
</div>
```
screenshot of error

Answer 1

Had the same issue, resolved when I updated /app/helpers/users_helper with the code:
# Returns the Gravatar for the given user.
def gravatar_for(user)
gravatar_id = Digest::MD5::hexdigest(user.email.downcase)
gravatar_url = "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/#{gravatar_id}"
image_tag(gravatar_url, alt: user.name, class: "gravatar")
end
(as shown in Listing 7.9)

Answer 2

I was having this same issue, which was hard to trace! As mentioned above, an email was not being sent to the database. My problem appeared to resolve itself after I changed code in my model/users.rb file that I was confusing myself with:
before_save { self.email = email.downcase }.
Before I had used before_save { self.email = email.downcase! }. Validation is located in Chapter 6 of the Rails Tutorial. Somehow I was confusing email.downcase! with self.email = email.downcase.
This still leaves the mystery of why an account was created without an email, instead of an error preventing me from proceeding...