Forum: Rails-core (closed, excessive spam) Radio buttons and other form fields

Hello I just started messing around with RoR yesterday. I have a simple
little data entry app I'm learning on currently. I just set it up with 
the
scaffold command and then used rake to make the db for me.

I have the fields all set up as "string" so they all by default from the
scaffold use this same text boxes in the new.html.erb file
 Code:

<% form_for(@beer) do |f| %>
  <p>
    <b>Name</b><br />
    <%= f.text_field :name %>
  </p>

My question is what is the do |f| actually doing. What is |f| referring 
to?
Also how can I use a grouping of radio buttons to submit information as 
well
as a select box with set options? (I want to have a "yes", "no", and
"maybe") radio group for one of my fields and I want a select box with 
the
US States in it.

I have looked up the form stuff and all i could get it to do was display 
a
radio button that did nothing when submitted. - I think this is probably 
my
lack of understanding of 'f.'

I know it has to be a simple little thing and I look like a real noob 
for
asking - but hey, I am a noob! I'm really excited about learning more 
RoR as
I go on - its really fun so far.

Thanks!

On Jun 2, 8:09 am, "Truong Thanh Hai" <truongtuongq...@gmail.com>
wrote:
>
f is a form builder (the docs for form_for should say something about
that). In a nutshell it is an object that knows the the object you're
manipulating is beer. You can create your own subclasses of
Formbuilder that display things in particular ways.

Fred

Hi Truong,

This question is appropriate for rubyonrails-talk not rubyonrails-core.

Core is for discussing development of the Rails framework itself.

Cheers,
Alan

On Mon, Jun 2, 2008 at 5:09 PM, Truong Thanh Hai