# New objects and new associations in same view

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/new-objects-and-new-associations-in-same-view/52521>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [January 15, 2006, 6:52pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/new-objects-and-new-associations-in-same-view/52521 "2006-01-15T18:52:36Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Daniel\_SSCohen](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/f6c823/32.png) [@Daniel\_SSCohen](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Daniel_SSCohen)\
**Post date:** [January 15, 2006, 6:52pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/new-objects-and-new-associations-in-same-view/52521/1 "2006-01-15T18:52:36Z")

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Hello All,

I generated scaffolding for my Users table and setup my additional  
models with their associations. I want to be able to create a new user,  
and its associated groups and privileges from the same view. My  
relationships are as follows:

users:  
has\_and\_belongs\_to\_many :groups  
has\_many :privileges

groups:  
has\_and\_belongs\_to\_many :users

privileges:  
belongs\_to :user

Right now, my controller is still the vanilla scaffolding-generated  
controller. How can I update the view and controller to save these  
additional fields?

Yes, I have read the wikie article “How To Update Multiple Associated  
Form Elements On One Page”  
([Peak Obsession](http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/pages/HowToUpdateMultipleAssociatedFormElementsOnOnePage)),  
however, I am still a bit confused. The primary object (employee) in  
this article also seems to have already been created. I want to do it  
(create user object and assocations) all in one shot. Any enlightening  
thoughts/comments would be appreciated.

Dan

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Daniel\_SSCohen](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/f6c823/32.png) [@Daniel\_SSCohen](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Daniel_SSCohen)\
**Post date:** [January 15, 2006, 6:58pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/new-objects-and-new-associations-in-same-view/52521/2 "2006-01-15T18:58:49Z")

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For groups:

[http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/pages/CheckboxHABTM](http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/pages/CheckboxHABTM)

And you could do something like:

\<%= collection\_select ‘user’, ‘privilege\_id’, @privileges, ‘id’, ‘name’  
%\>

for the privileges. Put this in your \_form.rhtml, and set @privileges to  
Privilege.find\_all in your controller. Change the last parameter  
(‘name’) to a column of privilege:

@privilege = Privilege.find(1)  
@privilege.name # this method will be used if you use ‘name’ as the last  
parameter

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Daniel\_SSCohen](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/f6c823/32.png) [@Daniel\_SSCohen](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Daniel_SSCohen)\
**Post date:** [January 16, 2006, 2:21am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/new-objects-and-new-associations-in-same-view/52521/3 "2006-01-16T02:21:41Z")

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Jules,

Thanks for the help with the groups. I think my privileges table is a  
bit more complicated. The values are a combination of a port and ip  
address. Since these can be made arbitrary, I have created a  
one-to-many relationship between the users (one) and privileges (many)  
table.

In the view, I plan to have two text fields, one for port, and one for  
ip. You can click on a button, and it will store this in a select box  
or create a new set of textfields so that more than one privilege can be  
granted at a time.

Any suggestions on how to accomplish this?

Thanks.