# Wx::Choice Items generated from lookup table, later need id's of choices

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/wx-choice-items-generated-from-lookup-table-later-need-ids-of-choices/176890>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [October 7, 2009, 5:23pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/wx-choice-items-generated-from-lookup-table-later-need-ids-of-choices/176890 "2009-10-07T17:23:06Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![inertia](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/i/d07c76/32.png) [@inertia](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/inertia)\
**Post date:** [October 7, 2009, 5:23pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/wx-choice-items-generated-from-lookup-table-later-need-ids-of-choices/176890/1 "2009-10-07T17:23:06Z")

</div>

Hi,

```
I'm using ActiveRecord for db access.....

If I have a table, fruits, with fields ID, name; and values:

ID,Name
1,Apple
2,Orange
3,Banana

And another, people, with ID,name, fruit_id

And I populate a Wx::Choice with these by doing something like

@choice = Wx::Choice.new
Fruit.find(:all).each {|fruit| @choice.append(fruit)}

And then later I want to create a person:

fred = Person.create(:name => "Fred", :fruit_id => ???)

What do I put in place of the ??? ?

I could do Fruit.find_by_name(@choice.get_string_selection), which

```

works, but in a larger app could lead to lots and lots of lookups, and  
in my particular case, wouldn’t work in some places as the thing  
appended to the Choice is an amalgam of the database fields.

```
I could do (@choice.get_selection +1) but that looks a bit ugly, and

```

just seems wrong.

```
I *think* I could subclass Wx::Choice to something that stores the

```

ID as well as the text to display, but I can see dragons in the distance  
that way…

```
What's my best option?

```

Anthony

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![inertia](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/i/d07c76/32.png) [@inertia](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/inertia)\
**Post date:** [October 7, 2009, 5:43pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/wx-choice-items-generated-from-lookup-table-later-need-ids-of-choices/176890/2 "2009-10-07T17:43:37Z")

</div>

> I _think_ I could subclass Wx::Choice to something that stores the  
> ID as well as the text to display, but I can see dragons in the distance  
> that way…
> 
> What’s my best option?

Caveat emptor… I don’t know WxRuby at all. However, the  
documentation  
([http://wxruby.rubyforge.org/doc/controlwithitems.html#ControlWithItems\_append](http://wxruby.rubyforge.org/doc/controlwithitems.html#ControlWithItems_append))  
mentions a method:

Integer append(String item, Object clientData)

Parameters:  
item - String to add.  
clientData - Client data to associate with the item.

and a corresponding:

Object get\_item\_data(Integer n)

Parameters:  
n - The zero-based position of the item.

So would this work?

@choice = Wx::Choice.new  
Fruit.find(:all).each {|fruit| @choice.append(fruit, fruit.id)}

selected\_fruit\_id = @choice.get\_item\_data(@choice.get\_selection)  
fred = Person.create(:name =\> “Fred”, :fruit\_id =\> selected\_fruit\_id)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![inertia](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/i/d07c76/32.png) [@inertia](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/inertia)\
**Post date:** [October 7, 2009, 5:58pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/wx-choice-items-generated-from-lookup-table-later-need-ids-of-choices/176890/3 "2009-10-07T17:58:51Z")

</div>

Tom S. wrote:

> > What’s my best option?
> 
> Caveat emptor… I don’t know WxRuby at all. However, the  
> documentation ([http://wxruby.rubyforge.org/doc/controlwithitems.html#ControlWithItems\_append](http://wxruby.rubyforge.org/doc/controlwithitems.html#ControlWithItems_append))  
> mentions a method:

Hi Tom,

```
That does indeed work. Fantastic.

I should have seen that myself, I am going to say I didn't, because

```

I only thought of “store the data within the control” thing as I was  
writing the email. But hey live and learn!

Thanks

Anthony