Trying to create pulldown select menu for US State form fiel

Rails
1

I noticed there is a country_select. Is there anything like
us_state_select maybe?

More specifically - I’m wondering if I manually have to populate an
array with all the U.S. state abbreviations so users can select which
state they live in while entering their mailing address.

2

On Sun, 2006-07-09 at 00:24 +0200, sfdesigner wrote:

I noticed there is a country_select. Is there anything like
us_state_select maybe?

More specifically - I’m wondering if I manually have to populate an
array with all the U.S. state abbreviations so users can select which
state they live in while entering their mailing address.

I would recommend that route…yes

Craig

3

Craig W. wrote:

I would recommend that route…yes

I think I’ve got it now. Thanks for the pointer.

For new and edit I have a partial _form.rhtml that is includes this…

<% us_states = [["",“Select State…”], [“AL”,“Alabama”],
[“AK”,“Alaska”], [“AZ”,“Arizona”], [“AR”,“Arkansas”],
[“CA”,“California”], [“CO”,“Colorado”], [“CT”,“Connecticut”],
[“DE”,“Delaware”], [“DC”,“District of Columbia”], [“FL”,“Florida”],
[“GA”,“Georgia”], [“HI”,“Hawaii”], [“ID”,“Idaho”], [“IL”,“Illinois”],
[“IN”,“Indiana”], [“IA”,“Iowa”], [“KS”,“Kansas”], [“KY”,“Kentucky”],
[“LA”,“Louisiana”], [“ME”,“Maine”], [“MD”,“Maryland”],
[“MA”,“Massachusetts”], [“MI”,“Michigan”], [“MN”,“Minnesota”],
[“MS”,“Mississippi”], [“MO”,“Missouri”], [“MT”,“Montana”],
[“NE”,“Nebraska”], [“NV”,“Nevada”], [“NH”,“New Hampshire”], [“NJ”,“New
Jersey”], [“NM”,“New Mexico”], [“NY”,“New York”], [“NC”,“North
Carolina”], [“ND”,“North Dakota”], [“OH”,“Ohio”], [“OK”,“Oklahoma”],
[“OR”,“Oregon”], [“PA”,“Pennsylvania”], [“RI”,“Rhode Island”],
[“SC”,“South Carolina”], [“SD”,“South Dakota”], [“TN”,“Tennessee”],
[“TX”,“Texas”], [“UT”,“Utah”], [“VT”,“Vermont”], [“VA”,“Virginia”],
[“WA”,“Washington”], [“WV”,“West Virginia”], [“WI”,“Wisconsin”],
[“WY”,“Wyoming”]] %>

<% us_states.each do |state| %> ><%= state[1] %> <% end %>

Thanks,
DAN

4

Thanks - I’ve placed the array in my application_helper.rb as a def
since I’m sure I’ll be using this in other areas as I develop more. I’m
also using selects more for other data points and it’s all much cleaner
now.

Using the rails select statement is nice since it automagically adds
selected=“selected” to an option tag in the edit view while still
defaulting to the first option in the new view. It also highlights the
select menu pulldown if I try to submit the form and the model
validation isn’t met such as with “validates_presence_of :state”. Nice.

I did need to switch the order of the abbreviation, statename to
statename, abbreviation to get the select option values set to the
abbreviation instead of the statename the way I wanted while showing the
statenames for users to choose from.

Does adding the params or object statement to application.rb add some
other flexibility?

Thanks again,
DAN

5

That’s too much Ruby in that their view!

Better to see this in a helper.

def select_state_for_user
[["",“Select State…”], [“AL”,“Alabama”],
[“AK”,“Alaska”], [“AZ”,“Arizona”], [“AR”,“Arkansas”],
[“CA”,“California”], [“CO”,“Colorado”], [“CT”,“Connecticut”],
[“DE”,“Delaware”], [“DC”,“District of Columbia”],
[“FL”,“Florida”],
[“GA”,“Georgia”], [“HI”,“Hawaii”], [“ID”,“Idaho”],
[“IL”,“Illinois”],
[“IN”,“Indiana”], [“IA”,“Iowa”], [“KS”,“Kansas”],
[“KY”,“Kentucky”],
[“LA”,“Louisiana”], [“ME”,“Maine”], [“MD”,“Maryland”],
[“MA”,“Massachusetts”], [“MI”,“Michigan”], [“MN”,“Minnesota”],
[“MS”,“Mississippi”], [“MO”,“Missouri”], [“MT”,“Montana”],
[“NE”,“Nebraska”], [“NV”,“Nevada”], [“NH”,“New Hampshire”],
[“NJ”,“New
Jersey”], [“NM”,“New Mexico”], [“NY”,“New York”], [“NC”,“North
Carolina”], [“ND”,“North Dakota”], [“OH”,“Ohio”],
[“OK”,“Oklahoma”],
[“OR”,“Oregon”], [“PA”,“Pennsylvania”], [“RI”,“Rhode Island”],
[“SC”,“South Carolina”], [“SD”,“South Dakota”],
[“TN”,“Tennessee”],
[“TX”,“Texas”], [“UT”,“Utah”], [“VT”,“Vermont”],
[“VA”,“Virginia”],
[“WA”,“Washington”], [“WV”,“West Virginia”], [“WI”,“Wisconsin”],
[“WY”,“Wyoming”]]
end

Then in a view:

<%= select user’, ‘state’, select_state_for_user ->

In helpers/application.rb

In the controller, accessible as:

params[:user][:state]

or, hopefully,

object = User.new(params[:user])

6

On Sun, 2006-07-09 at 19:34 +0200, sfdesigner wrote:

I did need to switch the order of the abbreviation, statename to
statename, abbreviation to get the select option values set to the
abbreviation instead of the statename the way I wanted while showing the
statenames for users to choose from.

Does adding the params or object statement to application.rb add some
other flexibility?

application_helper.rb is avaiable to all views, application.rb is
available to all models/controllers/views

Craig

7

Craig W. wrote:

On Sun, 2006-07-09 at 19:34 +0200, sfdesigner wrote:

I did need to switch the order of the abbreviation, statename to
statename, abbreviation to get the select option values set to the
abbreviation instead of the statename the way I wanted while showing the
statenames for users to choose from.

Does adding the params or object statement to application.rb add some
other flexibility?

application_helper.rb is avaiable to all views, application.rb is
available to all models/controllers/views

Craig

Hi,
Application.rb is only availablt to controllers and views, not models.
Chris