Generating select lists from collections

Rails
1

working through “four days on rails”
(http://www.rails4days.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Rails4Days.pdf
http://www.rails4days.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Rails4Days.pdf ), day three
has
me building a select list like so

<%= options_from_collection_for_select @categories, "id", "category", @item.category.id %>

this smells a little funny to me, as I have to make sure to name the
field
in the rails convention myself, whereas using “select” or “select_tag”
rails
will do it for me.

so I tried

<%= select “item”, “category_id”, (options_from_collection_for_select
@categories, “id”, “category”, @item.category.id) %>

but since options_from_collection_for_select escapes html, I get a
botched
list of options. is there a better existing way to build a select using
a
collection, or do I need to roll my own?

thanks,
jeff

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2

jemminger wrote:

working through “four days on rails”
(http://www.rails4days.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Rails4Days.pdf
http://www.rails4days.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Rails4Days.pdf ), day three
has
me building a select list like so

<%= options_from_collection_for_select @categories, "id", "category", @item.category.id %>

this smells a little funny to me, as I have to make sure to name the
field
in the rails convention myself, whereas using “select” or “select_tag”
rails
will do it for me.

so I tried

<%= select “item”, “category_id”, (options_from_collection_for_select
@categories, “id”, “category”, @item.category.id) %>

but since options_from_collection_for_select escapes html, I get a
botched
list of options. is there a better existing way to build a select using
a
collection, or do I need to roll my own?

Did you (or anyone else) ever figure this out? I am mostly concerned
with the escaping issue. I have an item called “Before & After” that
shows up like this:

Before & After I'd like it to show up like this: Before & After If that doesn't break things.

Or, is there a routine that renders html entities that I can call in the
controller? Some method such that:
“&”.x gives “&”?

Sure, I could write one, but there are a lot of HTML entities out there
and I don’t want to miss one, or reinvent the wheel.

3

Dan T. wrote:

Did you (or anyone else) ever figure this out? I am mostly concerned
with the escaping issue. I have an item called “Before & After” that
shows up like this:

Before & After I'd like it to show up like this: Before & After

Actually, I got that backwards,
I want it to show up as:

Before & After

And I got it to work by changing this line:
<%= options_for_select n%>

to this:

<%= h n %>

Duh.

4

jemminger wrote:

working through “four days on rails”
(http://www.rails4days.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Rails4Days.pdf
http://www.rails4days.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Rails4Days.pdf ), day three
has
me building a select list like so

Mine looks like:

Category: <%= options_from_collection_for_select @categories, "id", "category", @item.category_id %>

but I get an error:

NoMethodError in Items#create

Showing app/views/items/_form.rhtml where line #13 raised:

You have a nil object when you didn’t expect it!
You might have expected an instance of Array.
The error occured while evaluating nil.inject

Extracted source (around line #13):

10:
11: Category:
12:
13: <%= options_from_collection_for_select @categories, “id”,
“category”, @item.category_id %>
14:
15:
16:

As far as I can tell it’s correct. I’m pulling out my hair… any help?