# Text\_area\_for **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [January 31, 2008, 9:31pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/text-area-for/127744 "2008-01-31T21:31:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![philthompson](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/ed8c4c/32.png) [@philthompson](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/philthompson)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2008, 9:31pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/text-area-for/127744/1 "2008-01-31T21:31:53Z")
Hi, I have a form on a page which consists of a bunch of \<%= text\_field\_for blah blah blah %\> tags. One of them will contain a lot of text over multiple lines, surely it’s possible to do a \<%=text\_area\_for blahblahblah%\> ??? I can’t seem to find the correct syntax. I keep getting undefined method text\_area\_for… any ideas? cheers, phil ---
**Author:** ![philthompson](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/ed8c4c/32.png) [@philthompson](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/philthompson)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2008, 9:57pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/text-area-for/127744/2 "2008-01-31T21:57:38Z")
Rather then using text\_field\_for, you should use the syntax favoured by Rails 2.0 (which I presume you’re using)–start your form with: form\_for(@article) do |f| Then you can write things like this: f.text\_field :title # creates a text-field mapped to the title attribute of the model f.check\_box :is\_published f.submit “Register Me!” And, of course, the one you asked for: f.text\_area :comments, :cols =\> 60 Best of all, Rails will handle the mapping to the model, and even putting in data (say, when you edit the form) I wrote an article on forms in Rails here: [Railsrocket.com is for sale | HugeDomains](http://www.railsrocket.com/sharing-new-and-edit-forms-with-partials) it’s more geared towards sharing the new and edit forms, but hopefully will provide some clarity 🙂