Form Helpers

Rails
1

Hi everyone!

I’m using the advice in ‘Agile Web D. With Rails’ and creating
a FormBuilder sub-class to handle the formatting of elements in my
standard forms. Hence, I have the following view:

[code]<%= error_messages_for :enquiry -%>

<% tagged_form_for :enquiry,
:url => { :action => “submit” } do |form| %>

    <dl class="form">

<%= form.text_field :name %>
<%= form.text_field :email %>

    <dl class="form">

<%= form.text_field :telephone %>
<%= form.text_area :message %>

    <ul class="form">
      </li>

<%= submit_tag ‘Send Message’ %>

<% end %>[/code]

Which uses the following code in application_helper.rb:

[code]# Methods added to this helper will be available to all templates
in the application.
module ApplicationHelper
def tagged_form_for(name, *args, &block)
options = args.last.is_a?(Hash) ? args.pop : {}
options = options.merge(:builder => TaggedFormBuilder)
args = (args << options)
form_for(name, *args, &block)
end

private

class TaggedFormBuilder < ActionView::Helpers::FormBuilder

# <dt><label for="name">Your N.</label> <em>(required)</em>:</dd>
# <dd><%= form.text_field :name %></dd>

def self.create_tagged_field(method_name)
  define_method(method_name) do |label, *args|
    @template.content_tag("dt",
                          @template.content_tag("label",
                                                label.to_s.humanize,
                                                :for =>

“#{@object_name}_#{label}”)) +
@template.content_tag(“dd”,
super)
end
end

field_helpers.each do |name|
  create_tagged_field(name)
end

end
end[/code]

And that results in the following HTML:

[code]

Name
Email
Telephone
Message
[/code]

Which can be seen in the attached screenshot.

So, all very nice so far. However, I think it can be made better, for
instance, the form is clearly split into sections so it would be nice to
have the view say something like:

[code]<% tagged_form_for :enquiry,
:url => { :action => “submit” } do |form| %>

<% form.section do |section| %>
<%= section.text_field :name %>
<%= section.text_field :email %>
<% end %>

<% form.section do |section| %>
<%= section.text_field :telephone %>
<%= section.text_field :message %>
<% end %>

…

<% end %>[/code]

But I can’t figure out how to do this :frowning: It would also be nice to have a
specific command to generate the submit section of the form:

[code]<% tagged_form_for :enquiry,
:url => { :action => “submit” } do |form| %>

…

<% form.submit_section %>

<% end %>[/code]

But again, this is beyond my feeble grasp of RoR. Finally, I need to add
a :required => true|false parameter to the options for each field, which
will flag the field in the HTML output as follows:

[code]

Your N. (required):
[/code]

I think this change should (probably) be the easiest of the lot, but it
is still beyond my abilities.

Anyway, help with ANY of these issues would be appreciated.

Thanks
Jay

2

Anyone know how to use code tags???

3

Sorry, bad use of code tags. Anyway, I’ve done the ‘required’ bit,
which I said I thought would be the easiest bit:

def self.create_tagged_field(method_name) define_method(method_name) do |label, *args| options = args.last.is_a?(Hash) ? args.pop : {} required = options[:required] ? @template.content_tag("em", " (required)") : '' @template.content_tag("dt", @template.content_tag("label", label.to_s.humanize, :for => "#{@object_name}_#{label}") + required) + @template.content_tag("dd", super) end end

So that just uses the :required option to determine whether a required
flag should be shown.

However, I’m still stuck with the other stuff. Any help would be greatly
appreciated.

Thanks
Jay