Rails Assign a session value

I've spent hours at this but can't figure out why it's not working. I'm trying to assign the id of the company the user is currently in to a session variable that can be accessed by other models. But whenever I call the current_company method it keeps returning nil.

I'm using Devise but I don't think that's the problem.

The set_company method is working on the companies_controller because I can see the company values in my debug in the company_home method when that page is called.

This is the first time I've ever used assignments for helpers (current_company=(company)) and am not sure if that's correct or not. Someone on stackoverflow gave me the code. Is this assignment the problem? It seems to be as otherwise the code should work and current_company.nil? would not return true.

I've tried to inspect the session params using puts session.inspect but the output is huge and I can't anything one called :current company. Is there a simple way to just print a particular session paramater?

Any ideas? I'm at a loss at this stage.

[B]application_controller.rb[/B]

 helper_method :address_string, :current_company

 def current_company=(company)
    session[:current_company] = company.id
    puts "The current_company has been assigned"
    puts params.inspect
  end

  def current_company
  	@company = Company.find_by_id(session[:current_company])
  	puts "The current_company helper has been called"
  	puts params.inspect
  end


[B]companies_controller.rb[/B]

  def company_home
    puts "Test the current company"
    puts "#{@company.id} #{@company.name}"
    puts params.inspect
  end

  private
    def set_company
      @company = Company.find_by_id(params[:id])
      if @company.nil?||current_user.organisation_id != @company.organisation.id
          flash[:alert] = "Stop poking around you nosey parker"
          redirect_to root_path
      else
	current_company = @company # I've also tried putting this in the company_home method but it didn't work there either
      end      
    end

Here's the console output for reference

Started GET "/company_home/1" for 80.55.210.105 at 2014-12-19 10:26:49 +0000                                                                                                      
Processing by CompaniesController#company_home as HTML                                                                                                                            
  Parameters: {"authenticity_token"=>"gfdhjfgjhoFFHGHGFHJGhjkdgkhjgdjhHGLKJGJHpDQs6yNjONwSyTrdgjhgdjgjf=", "id"=>"1"}                                                                                   
  User Load (0.5ms)  SELECT  "users".* FROM "users"  WHERE "users"."id" = 6  ORDER BY "users"."id" ASC LIMIT 1                                                                    
  Company Load (0.3ms)  SELECT  "companies".* FROM "companies"  WHERE "companies"."id" = 1 LIMIT 1                                                                                
  Organisation Load (0.3ms)  SELECT  "organisations".* FROM "organisations"  WHERE "organisations"."id" = $1 LIMIT 1  [["id", 6]]                                                 
Test the current company                                                                                                                                                          
1 Cine                                                                                                                                                                            
{"_method"=>"get", "authenticity_token"=>"gfdhjfgjhoFFHGHGFHJGhjkdgkhjgdjhHGLKJGJHpDQs6yNjONwSyTrdgjhgdjgjf=", "controller"=>"companies", "action"=>"company_home", "id"=>"1"}                          
  Rendered companies/company_home.html.erb within layouts/application (0.1ms)                                                                                                     
  Company Load (0.6ms)  SELECT  "companies".* FROM "companies"  WHERE "companies"."id" IS NULL LIMIT 1                                                                            
The current_company helper has been called                                                                                                                                        
                                                                                                                                                                                  
{"_method"=>"get", "authenticity_token"=>"gfdhjfgjhoFFHGHGFHJGhjkdgkhjgdjhHGLKJGJHpDQs6yNjONwSyTrdgjhgdjgjf=", "controller"=>"companies", "action"=>"company_home", "id"=>"1"}                          
  CACHE (0.0ms)  SELECT  "organisations".* FROM "organisations"  WHERE "organisations"."id" = $1 LIMIT 1  [["id", 6]]                                                             
Completed 200 OK in 280ms (Views: 274.0ms | ActiveRecord: 1.7ms)