Rails - Aug 2006 - Getting nil when you want "" (a blank string)

This has got to be something obvious that I am missing...

I have a remote form that has one value that is passed back to the 
server from a text field. The form has a set of parameters passed to the 
:url key called search_params. When the field is empty and the form is 
submitted, I get

:my_val => ""

as expected when I examine the log. All is well with the world.

I need call that same action from a link_to_remote, in this case forcing 
my_val to be empty (""). To do this, I do

search_params.merge(:my_val => "")

Examining the search_params hash after the merge, I see that my_val is 
"" (not nil). When the params arrive at the server, the log shows 
:my_val => nil. Due to some other code downstream, nil causes operations 
to fail (it really needs to be "", not nil).

What am I missing here?

TIA,
Keith



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Hi!

Rails needs to encode params into urls...
I''ve done some work with the Net::HTTP library, where i needed to
encode
params into an url. I used CGI.escape(my_params_string) to encode it 
properly...
I guess encoding an empty string into a url is a mission...

To hack it in the meantime, use:

params[:my_val].to_s

nil.to_s

RUBY-DOC QUOTE:

Always returns the empty string.

   nil.to_s   #=> ""



Hope this helps in the meantime...
Ciao!

Gustav Paul
gustav@rails.co.za
itsdEx.com

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