jquery tokeninput javascript in rails3

Question

i have a rails project that has a simple mapped relation like below:

model categories

has_many :stories

model Story

belongs_to category

in my stories controller i have

def new
@story = Story.new
@categories = Category.all
end

then in my new.html.erb i have

<%= form_for @story do |f| %>
<%= f.text_field, :title %>
<%= collection_select(:story, :category_id, @categories, :id, :name)%>
<% end %>

i want to replace the <%= collection_select %>(select box) with <%= f.text_field%>(text field) and populate the data using jquery toxeninput javascript plugin and i dont know how to go about this.

Answer 1

I recently added jquery tokeninput to one of my projects and would try to give a rough step-by-step procedure to get it done:

1. Get the token input javascript and css and add it to html

2. Define a method search_category in your controller like following:

   def search_category
     # find the matching categories, Category.search method should implement all the logic needed
     categories = params[:q].blank? ? [] : Category.search(params[:q])
   
     render :json => categories.collect {|c| {:id => c.id, :name => c.name} }
   end
   

3. init the jquery tokeninput like following:

   $("input#whatever").tokenInput("<%= search_category_path %>", {
     prePopulate: [{ 
                    id: "<%= @story.category.id %>", 
                    name: "<%= @story.category.name %>"
                  }],
     tokenLimit: 1 // limits only one selectable category
   });
   

Hope it helps!