Multiple Models in one submit

I have an application which keeps track of my financial data. Each
bank transaction I make is stored as an Entry model. An entry just
has a name and an amount.
I keep the text_field for name and amount inside of a partial called
_entry.haml

I have a separate page for creating a new entry and editing an entry,
both using this partial. The edit page correctly pre-populates the
name and amount fields.

I want to add the ability for my app to import entries from a csv. In
step one, I select the file and click go. In step two, I receive the
file in my controller via @parsed_file =
CSV::Reader.parse(params[:csvfile])
I iterate through parsed_file and create an array of Entries like so:
counter = 0
@parsed_file.each do |row|
entry = Entry.new
entry.description = row[1]
entry.amount = row[3]
@csvdata[counter] = entry
counter += 1
end

In my view I iterate over the @csvdata array:

  • for entry in @csvdata
    %div= render :partial => “entry/entry”, :locals => { :entry =>
    entry }

The entry partial is rendered, however, the entries are not pre-
populated! The names given to all my HTML Form elements are the same!

  1. How do I get the partials to pre-populate my form elements?
  2. If I wrap all these form elements into a form, how would I process
    them when the next controller action receives this data?

Thank you for any information you can give!