How to write your own 'action'

Question

('handcode' branch) https://github.com/Yorkshireman/sebcoles/tree/handcode

I have a User model, and two models that inherit from that: Teacher and Student. They also have their own controllers that inherit from the User controller.

I also have a Group model.

group belongs to teacher, teacher has many groups. group has and belongs to many students. student has and belongs to many groups.

There is a join table for the HABTM relationships, called 'groups_students'.

I have managed to create a form element that allows me to set the 'type' of User to 'Student' or 'Teacher'.

The difficulty I have now is assigning students to groups in the view. I can do this in the console no problem, as outlined here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/29223974/rails-4-habtm-how-to-set-multiple-ids-in-console/29227188#29227188

I'm stumped as to how to do this in a view. I want to do it in the Student's show view.

Can someone at least give me some guidance? I have a pretty good book on Rails, but I need to know roughly what I have to do.

Answer 1 · 2015-04-25T19:54:28Z

April 25, 2015 7:54pm

In the view:

<%= form_tag assign_to_group_path do %>
    <%= hidden_field_tag :user_id, @user.id %>
    <%= select_tag :group_id, options_from_collection_for_select(Group.all, "id", "title"), include_blank: true %>
    <%= submit_tag "Assign to Class" %>
<% end %>

private part of users_controller:

def user_params
      params[:user].permit(:type) if params[:user] # The 'if params[:user]' means an incomplete User object won't be rejected.
    end

students_controller (inherits from users_controller):

def assign_to_group
        @user=User.find(params[:user_id])
        @group=Group.find(params[:group_id])
        @user.groups << @group unless @user.groups.include? @group
        @user.save!
        redirect_to user_path @user
    end

routes.rb:

post 'assign_to_group' => 'students#assign_to_group'

Answer 2 · 2015-04-13T03:05:19Z

April 13, 2015 3:05am

I would use checkboxes on the group form so you could check off the students you want in the group.

See here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21688200/rails-4-checkboxes-for-has-and-belongs-to-many-association

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How to write your own 'action'

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