Submit a form

Rails
1

Hi everyone, i have the following code:

<%= form_tag :action => ‘list_wedding_by_continent’, :id => “Africa” %>
<%= collection_select(:thing, :continent, @continent,“id”,“continent”)
%>
<%= submit_tag ‘Search’ %>
<%= end_form_tag %>

how do i pass in the selected country in the list, instead of hard
coding “Africa”
thank you

2

can anyone help me?

3

pingu wrote:

thank you

Forget the rails helpers for a moment and go back to HTML basics.

You’ve got a form (which rails can help you create using form_tag, or
even better, form_for). This submits a post request to a URL (which in
the rails helper can be generated with a hash of parameters, including
perhaps :action => ‘some_action’). The contents of that form (including,
as in your case, a select box, which rails can help you create with
select, select_tag, collection_select, etc) are passed to the receiving
URL for it to do with what it wants.

There’s no way (short of some javascript) that the chosen option of the
select box can end up the url the form is submitting to, which I think
is what you’re asking. Have a play around with the helpers and examine
the source code they produce in your browser, or check out the API. It
will all become clear… eventually.

4

Thanks Chris T, and i really appreciate you taking the time to explain
it to me. But i am still confused, if there is no way to get the
information out of a form, whats the point of it?

5

You should get the selected continent coming through as things are (just
inspect the contents of the params hash that is passed to your
controller.
However I think you’re expecting params[:id] to contain the selected
continent

This won’t happen because

  • I think that having :id => ‘Africa’ in form_tag will effectively mean
    that it’s overriden
  • collection_select (like the various other helpers of its family) will
    put the selected parameter in params[:thing][:continent] (Check out the
    html that is generated by your form

Fred

6

Great, thanks Fred - sorted it.