title: interning empty string error
body: <p>Currently, in my request model I have:  </p>
  
  <pre><code>belongs_to :requestor, :class_name =&gt; 'User'
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>So the requestor is the current_user.  </p>
  
  <p>Problem is when the <code>current_user</code> clicks the create button to submit a form for a request, all of the attributes get updated to the database that are in the form.<br>
  But since <code>requestor_id</code> is not a value to fill out in the form, that brings back a value of null in the database when the new request record is created.<br>
  What I want is an integer (which equates to the primary key of the Users table) updated in the <code>requestor_id</code> column in the request table when the user clicks the create button.<br>
  So I thought that maybe adding a <code>requestor_id</code> as a symbol in the params for the create action would solve that:  </p>
  
  <pre><code>def create_common
    @a = Request.new
      b = @a.requestor_id
    @resource = yield params[:contact + "#{b}".to_sym]
    self.resource = @resource
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But instead it returns the following error:  </p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>interning empty string</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>Thanks for any suggestions.</p>