From: Jim <jimnj72@...>
Date: 2007-05-18T06:30:03+09:00
Subject: Multiple Select Dropdown and Storing Problem

I was working on this a couple of months back and could not figure
out
what I was doing wrong.  I came back to it today and wanted to post
again to see if any of you had an idea.  Here is the problem.

I have this code:


<select name="myrep[RepFor][]" size="3" multiple="multiple">
  <%= options_from_collection_for_select(@rflists, "id", "keyword",
@selected) %>
</select>


The field I am storing is called RepFor in the myrep table.  The
options for the dropdown comes from a keyword table that have an id
and name.  The options I want have been fed into rflists.  This all
works good and displays properly with a multiple select dropdown with
the proper names and values.   Here is the html it renders:


<select name="myrep[RepFor][]" size="3" multiple="multiple">
  <option value="1808">Car Insurance</option>
<option value="1809">Home Insurance</option>
<option value="1810">Technology</option>
<option value="1811">Accounting</option>
<option value="1812">Legal</option>


So if I select Car Insurance, Home Insurance and Technology and
submit
it this is what gets written to the DB. Exactly as shown below.


--- - "1808" - "1809" - "1810"


When I reopen the form nothing is selected.


Now if I manually set @selected in my code as follows it selects the
items I have forced when I reopen the form:


<% @selected = 1808, 1809, 1810 %>
<select name="myrep[RepFor][]" size="3" multiple="multiple">
  <%= options_from_collection_for_select(@rflists, "id", "keyword",
@selected) %>
</select>


My question is what do I need to do to make the select write the data
to the DB the same way I set it in @selected.  Is there something
that
has to be done in the controller to keep it from being written as
follows:


--- - "1808" - "1809" - "1810"


or do I need to do something special when reading it back?


Thanks for your help.


Jim