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ruby-on-railsform-fordata-collection

form for helper bad collection

I am useing a form_for helper to collect data on the client side of my application. However something weird is happening. I am not collecting the :name and :description and they are both returning as nil. this is my code:

<%= form_for @type do |f| %>
....

  <%= f.text_field :name, :class => "col-xs-4" %>
  <%= f.text_field :description, :class => "col-xs-4"  %>
<%= f.submit %>
....

Do I need to make a fields_for under the form_for to get this working? It is a bit tricky because I am using @type which in this case is set up to tell the view which kind of attr. they are looking at. For example, this line:

<%= f.label @type %> <label> Description</label>

depending on what view you are on shows ether:

Group Description
or
Tag Description

and because they are both technically the same, I am using the same index for both. I hope I am clear with my issue and thank anyone who understands my problem and solution.

Solution

  • The param name will depend on the object you pass.

    If @type contains an instance of Group, then you will get the params under params[:group], and if it is an instance of Tag, the you will get them on params[:tag]

    <%= form_for @type do |f| %>
  <%= f.label :name, "#{@type.model_name} Description" %>
  <%= f.text_field :name %>
  <%= f.submit %>
<% end %>

    Note the label definition. The way you are defining it will create 2 labels and the second one will not be linked to any field.

    fields_for is normally used when you are creating several objects within the same form, for instance a Project and several tasks associated to it.

    Hope this helps.

    update:

    If @type is a string or symbol it should work too. The tradeoffs using this approach will be that if there are any validation errors when creating the object, those will not be displayed and the fields will not be prefilled with the input that the user gave before submitting the form, forcing the user to enter all the information again and guessing which was the validation error (you can initialize it from the received params, but that complicates the code readability)

    The unique thing different in your view would be the label definition.

    <%= f.label :name, "#{@type} Description" %>