Make yourself the default (extra credit)

Got it! It's actually much simpler than what I described above. There are values already coming from current_user (current_user.id). So just use that in selected: and you're good to go.

Caleb, you're a genius!

Upon inspecting the form page (when the rails server is running) there were values already assigned to each user (in order of creation "1, 2, 3, etc."). I didn't really think anything of this until you said "selected: seems to only accept an integer." This made me remember that in the simple_form documentation there was a section in "collection" that described value_method.

I didn't see the value (no pun intended) of this, but instead of using a numerical numbering system, you can instead use the :full_name as a value system and then set selected: to "current_user.full_name"

Wham bam! Solved! Thank you so much for being a sounding board and sticking with me on this! You're awesome! :-)

Maybe try something like :default => current_user ?

I tried that too. Same problem (still defaults to the user at the top of the list). :-/

I know I'm late, but I figured it out! There's an option called "selected."

<%= f.input :user_id, collection: User.order(:first_name), selected: current_user, label_method: :full_name %>

Try this! I've read around various places that "include_blank: false" breaks the "selected" thingy (I'm not sure what type of code "selected" is at this point in my adventure, so I went with 'thingy' to avoid talking out my ass).

Anyway, In my code, I left "include_blank" out completely and it works. There isn't even a blank line! My intuition is that it's unnecessary when there aren't any blank values in the database to place there. The blank line must come from simple_form as the default "default" item.

Man, even that didn't work! I'm curious if the fact that User.order() doesn't work how I would like it has anything to do with it. I can sort by either :first_name or :last_name, but both cases yield the same result (sorting by first name). I don't think this has anything to do with my problem, but the fact that the data isn't working like how I would expect is strange. Especially since I followed the tuts to the letter.

I took a look at your github page, Caleb, and downloaded a copy of your treebook app just to compare code and see if I missed something. I tried testing your code to see if yours worked differently from mine, but I experienced the same problem I'm having (won't default to current user, but instead sorts by first name since order was set to ":first_name"). Are you sure it worked as you expected? If so, then I must be missing something completely.

In any case, I hope to find out more as I become more proficient with Ruby because I definitely need more practice. Regardless of how frustrating this setback is, it's still loads of fun to work in RoR! :-)

You're right. I didn't realize it was showing the user at the top of the list, and not the current_user. I haven't fixed it, but I think I know what the problem is. selected: seems to only accept an integer, but the devise database doesn't have any kind of user_id integer that I know of. And we can't use the user_id from the statuses page, because it's not part of the same table or view or controller or something. If you manually change selected: to a number that identifies the position in the list, it works fine. Just need to find a way to pass a number from current_user. Any ideas?

Haha! Spoke too soon. Just found out it breaks the submission process since it returns a nil value. Still working on it...