Help with arrays in forms(getting value from http request pa

Rails
1

Hi all,
I’m having some trouble getting form data from params, and I could
use some help. A contact can have an unlimited number of phone
numbers, so I want the ability to add more phone text boxes (via AJAX)
as the user clicks add. This works fine, and I get the following
output by using the “<%= text_field “phone” , “number”, “index” => n
%>” value in my rhtml. This generates the following html.

Number: business fax home mobile Number: business fax home mobile

How do I get the params from “phone” into an array of Phone Objects?
I’ve tried Array.new(params[:phone]), but this doesn’t work. I’m new
to ROR so any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Todd

2

Hi Todd,

Todd N. wrote:

A contact can have an unlimited number of phone
numbers, so I want the ability to add more phone
text boxes (via AJAX) as the user clicks add. This
works fine, and I get the following output by using
the “<%= text_field “phone” , “number”, “index” => n
%>” value in my rhtml.
…
How do I get the params from “phone” into an array
of Phone Objects? I’ve tried Array.new(params[:phone]),
but this doesn’t work.

You might want to check out a thread from yesterday titled “Multiple
items
in a single form - try to get radio button selected”. You can use the
same
pattern.

hth,
Bill

3

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. I’ve been able to
uniquely name my fields as the thread suggests (see the html from the
original post). They all have the form “phone[][fieldname]”.
I’m not sure what the syntax would be to get them out of the https
params request. Would it simply be

params[":phone[0]"]

to get the first index of the phone input fields?

Thanks,
Todd

4

Hi Todd,

Todd N. wrote:

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. I’ve been able to
uniquely name my fields as the thread suggests (see the html from the
original post). They all have the form “phone[][fieldname]”.
I’m not sure what the syntax would be to get them out of the https
params request. Would it simply be

params[":phone[0]"]

I’d recommend moving to textfield_tag and, as Scott did, append the
index or
whatever to the name of the param. Your current approach binds your
text_field to the model which represents a single row in your table.
That
implies that you’ve got multiple phone fields in the record which, given
that you said ‘unlimited number of phone numbers’, doesn’t sound like
what
you want. I’m assuming you’ve got a separate table for your phone
numbers.
Yes? If so, then in your Ajax call to add a new field, keep track of
how
many you’ve added (possibly in a session variable), then when the form
is
submitted, you can iterate through the phone params with something like
params[:phone#{index}] and put them in the array you’re looking to
create,
store them in separate rows, or whatever it is you’re trying to do.

hth,
Bill

5

Gotcha, that makes a lot more sense now. Thanks for the explanation,
I’ll try it when I get home tonight and we’ll see if it works!