Rails: Communication between View & Controller question (theory, practice, answer, anything!)

Question

I need a straightforward, easy to understand answer on this one. I\'m building a user control panel for administrative users to create/edit/delete users of the system throu

Answer 1

Basically everything EmFi suggested, plus a few tweaks:

app/views/users/new.html.haml

- if @roles
  %li
    - @assigned_roles ||= []
    - @roles.each do |role| 
      = label_tag role
      = check_box_tag 'user[assigned_roles][]', role, (@roles & @assigned_roles ).include?(role)

removed:

= hidden_field_tag 'user[assigned_roles][]', @type

(The parameter I wanted to carry over is supplied by:

- form_for @user, :url => {:action => :create, :type => @type) do |f| ...

Since i only used it for presentation, I don't need to store it in the form.)

app/controllers/users_controller.rb:

def new
   @user = User.new
   @type = params[:type]
   @roles = get_all_roles # don't need to reject anything here either, since the :type is no longer part of this array
   @cancel = users_path
end

def create
   @user = User.new(params[:user])
   @assigned_roles = params[:user][:assigned_roles] # already has the roles I need; unchecked checkboxes are not passed into this; only checked ones
    if @user.save
      update_user_roles(@user,@assigned_roles)
      if current_user.is_admin_or_root?
        flash[:message] = "User \"#{@user.username}\" created."
        redirect_to users_path
      else
        flash[:message] = "Congrats! You’re now registered, #{@user.username}!"
        redirect_to app_path
      end
    else
      @type = params[:type]
      @roles = get_all_roles # don't need to reject anything, since the :type is no longer part of this array
      @cancel = users_path
      render :action => 'new'
    end
  end

Thanks, EmFi, for setting me straight on this! The @assigned_roles logic and

- form_for @user, :url => {:action => :create, :type => @type) do |f| ...

were the keys to this puzzle I was searching for!