InPlaceSelectEditor question

Rails
1

I’m attempting to use the example given in the Rails Recipes book
chapter 2,
to create a select drop-down using the InPlaceEditor function (modified
to
be InPlaceSelectEditor.

The example given works (a country list drop-down), but I’m attempting
to
use it to display a list of items generated from an object in another
table
that is linked to the table that I’m editing. That also works except
that it
displays the ‘id’ instead of the related value of the id in the other
table.
Sorry if that isn’t clear. Here’s the relevant code.

Table item contains language_id (among other fields, of course)
Table language contains id, lang (the latter having the language in
English)

   <% for @item in job.items %>
      <tr>
        <td><%= in_place_editor_field :item, :title %></td>
        <td><%= in_place_select_editor_field(
         :item,
         :language_id,
         {},
         :select_options =>

options_from_collection_for_select(@languages, ‘id’, ‘lang’)) %>

( … more code … )

<% end %>

It works okay except that it displays item.language_id (which when
clicked,
correctly shows the list of languages, not their ids), when what I want
it
to display is item.language.lang (not the id of the language). However,
the
in_place_select_editor helper doesn’t seem to have on option to override
the
value that is displayed. It just automatically displays the
object/method of
the first two options. I presume I could extend the helper to take an
additional option that would be displayed, but I don’t know any JS so
I’m
not sure how to do that. (Sorry, I’m a beginner.)

Thanks for the help!

2

Salut François,

thanks for the code snipplet - it works indeed, but only with one little
drawback: as soon as the value is submitted, the text value is shown as
the id again. If one clicks the field again to edit it, the textual
value is shown properly again.

Is there a way to display the desired text value instead of the
numerical id -after- the editing is done (= the new value has been
submitted)? Or is this the way how it should work after all and there’s
only something wrong on my end?

Cheers,
carp

3

Finally solved this problem after digging deep into Rails’ innards. Am
noting solution here for those who may run into the same thing. There
are probably better ways, but this worked for me.

the in_place_select_editor_field calls the IntanceTag.to_content_tag
method, which is as follows:

  def to_content_tag(tag_name, options = {})
    content_tag(tag_name, value, options)
  end

  def value
    unless object.nil?
      object.send(@method_name)
    end
  end

So as you can see, it just assumes that the value to be displayed in the
tag is the value of the method passed to the tag.

So I extended the InstanceTag class by adding a new
‘to_content_tag_display’ method. I added the following to my
application_helper.rb (maybe there’s a better place to put this kind of
stuff? I don’t really know.)

module ActionView
module Helpers

class InstanceTag #:nodoc:
  include Helpers::TagHelper

  def to_content_tag_display(tag_name, display, options = {})
    content_tag(tag_name, display, options)
  end

end

end
end

Then I modified my in_place_select_editor_field to accept an additional
display parameter and to call to_content_tag_display passing to it the
same additional parameter:

def in_place_select_editor_field(object, method, display, tag_options
= {},
in_place_editor_options = {})
tag = ::ActionView::Helpers::InstanceTag.new(object, method, self)
tag_options = { :tag => “span”,
:id =>
“#{object}#{method}#{tag.object.id}in_place_editor",
:class =>
“in_place_editor_field”}.merge!(tag_options)
in_place_editor_options[:url] =
in_place_editor_options[:url] ||
url_for({ :action => "set#{object}_#{method}”, :id =>
tag.object.id })
tag.to_content_tag_display(tag_options.delete(:tag), display,
tag_options) +
in_place_select_editor(tag_options[:id], in_place_editor_options)
end

Then in my view, I added an additional parameter:

<%= in_place_select_editor_field(
:item,
:language_id,
@item.language.lang,
{},
:select_options =>
options_from_collection_for_select(@languages, ‘id’, ‘lang’)) %>

the third parameter (in this case @item.language.lang) is the value to
be displayed.

PS. This might make a useful patch?

François Montel wrote:

I’m attempting to use the example given in the Rails Recipes book
chapter 2,
to create a select drop-down using the InPlaceEditor function (modified
to
be InPlaceSelectEditor.

The example given works (a country list drop-down), but I’m attempting
to
use it to display a list of items generated from an object in another
table
that is linked to the table that I’m editing. That also works except
that it
displays the ‘id’ instead of the related value of the id in the other
table.
Sorry if that isn’t clear. Here’s the relevant code.

Table item contains language_id (among other fields, of course)
Table language contains id, lang (the latter having the language in
English)

   <% for @item in job.items %>
      <tr>
        <td><%= in_place_editor_field :item, :title %></td>
        <td><%= in_place_select_editor_field(
         :item,
         :language_id,
         {},
         :select_options =>

options_from_collection_for_select(@languages, ‘id’, ‘lang’)) %>

( … more code … )

<% end %>

It works okay except that it displays item.language_id (which when
clicked,
correctly shows the list of languages, not their ids), when what I want
it
to display is item.language.lang (not the id of the language). However,
the
in_place_select_editor helper doesn’t seem to have on option to override
the
value that is displayed. It just automatically displays the
object/method of
the first two options. I presume I could extend the helper to take an
additional option that would be displayed, but I don’t know any JS so
I’m
not sure how to do that. (Sorry, I’m a beginner.)

Thanks for the help!