rails select2 field not returned into form

Question

This may be a variant of unanswered Select2-rails passing data to form field

I have a field barrister_id in a form

<%= form_for(@mail) do |f| %>
  ...
  <div class="field">
    <%= f.label :barrister_id %><br />
    <!-- %= f.collection_select :barrister_id, Barrister.all, :id, :code_and_name % -->
    <% @barristers = Barrister.all %>
    <%= select_tag :barrister_id,   options_from_collection_for_select(@barristers,
      :id,:code), id: "barristerselect"%>
  </div>

The application.html.erb links this to javascript Select2 gem thus:

<script>
  $(document).ready(function() { $("#barristerselect").select2(); });
</script>

and that works to give me the fancy Select2 pulldown of values.

BUT the field value barrister_id is returned only in params.barrister_id, NOT as expected in params.mail.barrister_id, so that the value entered fails validation as being blank.

As shown commented out, I would have preferred to use f.collection_select for the selection box, but couldn't get Select2 to work nice with it.

Any ideas folks?

Answer 1

First of all you should use f.select in this case. With select_tag you need to do this

<%= select_tag "mail[barrister_id]",   options_from_collection_for_select(@barristers,
  :id,:code), id: "barristerselect"%>

If you are using f.select then use this. Notice the empty curly braces. That is because html_options is the fourth argument for f.select helper. Checkout the documentation here.

<%= f.select :barrister_id, options_from_collection_for_select(@barristers,
  :id,:code), {}, id: "barristerselect" %>