How to access the values of an associated model

I have the code

def showTags(post)
    tagString = ''
    tagString += "Politics " if post.tags(:politics)
    tagString += "Technology " if post.tags(:technology)
    tagString += "Entertainment " if post.tags(:entertainment)
    tagString += "Sports " if post.tags(:sports)
    tagString += "Science " if post.tags(:science)
    tagString += "Crime " if post.tags(:crime)
    tagString += "Business " if post.tags(:business)
    tagString += "Social " if post.tags(:social)
    tagString += "Nature " if post.tags(:nature)
    tagString += "Other " if post.tags(:other)

    return tagString
end

My tags model has 10 boolean values (politics, tech, etc...) and belongs_to :post. When you make a new post there are check boxes that correspond to each field. So after making a post there are some trues and some false values. The problem arises when I call this method in the post#index, in order to display which tags belong to this post. The problem is that all of the words display开发者_StackOverflow, i played with the console and the post.tags is correct (some true and some false values) however if post.tags(:politics) (or whatever) always returns true. I tried using if post.tags.politics but that just gave an error.

Can someone please help me with this.

Assuming you have belongs_to :post in your Tag class and has_many :tags in your Post class then the tags attribute is a list so you either need to iterate over it:

post.tags.each {|tag| puts tag.politics}

Or index into it:

post.tags[0].politics

From an outside glance this type of model doesn't make too much sense though. Maybe do has_one :tag in the Post class instead. Then you can call post.tag.politics.