Adding 4 Drinks to a Station in Form

Question

I have two models: Stations & Drinks

Stations has_many :drinks and Drinks belongs_to :stations

I'm trying to make my form so that when you create a station, you can select 4 drinks that will belong to that station as well.

Original form:

<%= semantic_form_for [:admin, @station] do |f| %>
<fieldset class="inputs">
    <ol>
        <%=f.input :name %>
        <%=f.input :number, :as => :number %>
    </ol>
</fieldset>
<%= f.buttons :commit %>

I've been trying to figure out how to create 4 (select) input fields in this form so that you can select Drink #1, #2, #3, #4 for the current station. Any ideas?

I'm currently trying accepts_nested_attributes_for :drinks, :allow_destroy => true.

Drinks belongs_to :station

id | name | station_id |

Stations has_many :drinks

id | name |

.

UPDATE As noted below by tihm, you can add 4 drinks and edit their values with this:

<% f.fields_for :drinks do |drink_form| %>
            <%# Put your inputs here...could be a select box %>
            <%= drink_form.select :name, [['Drink #1', 'drink_1'],['Drink #2', drink_2] %>  

            <%# Or a plain input %>
            <%= drink_form.input :description %>  

            <%# ... Any other drink attributes ... %>
        <% end %>

However, what I'm trying to do is generate four select boxes that each list Drink.all and be able to swap out one drink object with a different one. So, when you change the value of the first select box from coke to pepsi, it removes the station_id from coke, and adds the station_id to pepsi.

I don't need to be able to edit the drink attributes.. I just need to change which drinks are associated with this station. Is this possible in the same form?

Answer 1

Unfortunately, I couldn't find a "best-practice" rails way of doing... so I ended up doing a bunch of AJAX / custom ruby code to implement it. Here it is (maybe it'll help someone else):

<% @drinks = Drink.all %>
    <fieldset class="inputs">
        <ol>
        <% @station.drinks.each_with_index do |d,i| %>
            <li>
                <label class="label" for="station_name">Item</label>
                <%=select("drink", "id", @drinks.collect { |d| [d.name,d.id] }, {:include_blank => true, :selected => d.id}, {:class => "station-items"})%>
            </li>
        <% end %>
        <% m = 4-@station.drinks.count %>
        <% m.times do %>
            <li>
                <label class=" label" for="station_name">Item</label>
                <%=select("drink", "id", @drinks.collect { |d| [d.name,d.id] }, {:include_blank => true}, {:class => "station-items"})%>
            </li>
        <% end %>
        </ol>
    </fieldset>
    <%= f.buttons :commit %>
<% end %>

<script>    
$(".station-items").on("change",function(){
  var node = $(this)
  , prev = node.attr('data-rel')
  , next = parseInt(node.val())
  , station_id = $("#station_id").val()

  if(next) {
    $.ajax({
      url: "/drinks/"+next+".json",
      type: "PUT",
      data: { id:next, "drink[station_id]":station_id }
    });
  }

  if(prev) {
    $.ajax({
      url: "/drinks/"+prev+".json",
      type: "PUT",
      data: { id:prev, "drink[station_id]":"" }
    });
  }

  $(this).attr('data-rel',next);
});

$('.station-items option:selected').each(function(){
  return $(this).parent().attr('data-rel',$(this).val())
});
</script>