Creating has_and_belongs_to_many objects within the same form in rails

Question

I'm building a rails app, using devise for authentication and cancan for authorization. I have a form where you can create a "post" and each post has_and_belongs_to many "tags".

I want to create a system for creating tags similar to stack overflow, where the tags are simply inputed via a single text box and then converted to the appropriate tag objects on the server side. Initially I simply had a text box where I could type in a string and the string would be parsed as such in the controller

@post.tags << params[:post][:tags].split(' ').map{ |name| Tag.createOrReturnExisting name}

and that worked perfectly.. until I added cancan authorization, which required me to add

def post_params
  params.require(:post).permit(:title,:description,:tags,:content,:types_id)
end

to my controller , which now causes the following error to be thrown upon trying to create a Post undefined method each for "Tag1 Tag2 Tag3\r\n":String I'm assuming this is because its trying to treat the string from the textbox like an array of tags before I've had a chance to format it.

So my question is, how must I format my controller, model, or view to be able to parse the string before it gets to the post_params method?

here's my models, view, and controller

Tag Model

class Tag < ActiveRecord::Base
    has_and_belongs_to_many :post, join_table: 'tag_posts' 

    def self.createOrReturnExisting title
        if Tag.any? {|tag| tag.title == title} 
            logger.debug "Tag: #{title} already exists"
            Tag.find_by title: title
        else
            logger.debug "Tag: #{title} created"
            Tag.new title: title
        end
    end
end

Post Model

class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
    belongs_to :user
    has_and_belongs_to_many :tags, join_table: 'tags_posts'
    has_one :type

    validates :title, presence: true, length: { maximum: 50 }
    validates :description, presence: true, length: { maximum: 255 }
    validates :types_id, presence: true, length: { maximum: 255 }
end

new.html.erb

<h1>Post#new</h1>
<p>Find me in app/views/post/new.html.erb</p>

<%= form_for @post do |f| %>

    Title: <%= f.text_field :title %>
    Description: <%= f.text_area :description %>
    Type: <%= f.collection_select( :types_id, Type.all, :id, :title ) %>
    Content: <%= f.text_area :content%>
    Tags: <%= f.text_area :tags%>

    <%= f.submit %>

<% end %>

PostController

class PostsController < ApplicationController

    load_and_authorize_resource

    def miniList
        render 'miniList'
    end
  def create
        @post = Post.new
        @post.title = params[:post][:title]
        @post.description = params[:post][:description]
        @post.content = params[:post][:content]
        @tagStrings = params[:post][:tags].split(' ')
        puts @tagStrings

        @tagStrings.map do |name|
          @tags << Tag.createOrReturnExisting name
        end
        @post.tags = @tags
        @post.types_id = params[:post][:types_id]
        if @post.save!
            flash[:success] = "Post Saved Successfully"
        else
            flash[:error] = "Post not saved"
        end
        current_user.posts << @post
        redirect_to :root
  end

  def new

        @post = Post.new
        render 'new'
  end

  def edit 
  end

  def update
  end

  def delete
  end

    private
        def post_params
            params.require(:post).permit(:title,:description,:tags,:content,:types_id)
        end
end

Answer 1

I figured it out, what I needed to do was change load_and_authorize_resource to authorize_resource since I don't want cancan messing with my parameters, this will just have it check authorization for my controller actions, and then leave the rest alone. I still wish there was a more intuitive way to do it, but this accomplishes what I need