From: Kirk Haines <khaines@...>
Date: 2005-07-17T09:05:01+09:00
Subject: Re: Can Rails deal with related attributes in forms?

On Saturday 16 July 2005 5:00 pm, Michael Schuerig wrote:

> Yes, that's entirely possible.
>
> http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/show/HowToEditObjectArraysUsingForms
>
> That still looks more complicated than it should, IMHO, but I think for
> the time being there's no easier solution.

Interesting little article.

For comparison, here's the equivalent in my current IOWA version, with 
assumption that the list of items comes from somewhere useful, such as a 
database query, and is just passed to the List component when the list is 
called:

Views:

List.html
-----
<h1>Item#list</h1>

<table border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="10%">
<repeat oid="item_list"><tr><td>@item.name</td></tr>
</repeat>
</table>
<br />
<a oid="goto_edit">Edit</a>
-----

Edit.html
-----
<h1>Edit itemlist</h1>

<form oid="save_items">
 <table border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
 <repeat oid="item_list">
  <tr><td><input type="text" oid="item.name" size="20">)</td></tr></repeat>
 </table>
 <br />  
 <input type='submit' oid="save_items" value='Save' />
</form>
<br />
<a oid="go_back">List</a>
-----

Controllers:

List.iwa
-----
class List < Iowa::Component
  attr_accessor :item, :items

  def goto_edit
    edit_page = page_named('Edit')
    edit_page.items = @items
    yield edit_page
  end
end

<?
  item_list {
    item = item
    list = items
  }
?>
-----

Edit.iwa
-----
class Edit < Iowa::Component
  attr_accessor :item. :items

  def go_back
    yield prev_page
  end

  def save_items
    # This really isn't needed unless something special needs to be done; the
    #  changes automatically get saved.
  end
end

<?
  item_list {
    item = item
    list = items
  }
?>


Note that this example above doesn't sound like it quite does what the OP was 
asking for, which is to have a master record with it's fields, and each of 
the associated records with their fields, all displayed in one big form for 
editing.

Using my CRUDForm component to do that, the view would end up being something 
like this:

-----
<h1>Edit itemlist</h1>

<crudform oid="item_record" />

<br />
<a oid="go_back">List</a>
-----

And the controller something like so:
-----
import 'CRUDForm'
class Edit < Iowa::Component
  attr_accessor :item

  def go_back
    yield prev_page
  end
end

<?
  item_record {
    record = item
    cascade = true
  }
?>
-----


I'm sure one can do something similarly simple to use with Rails and Nitro, as 
well.


Kirk Haines