Short story: I need to use a different style of inputs to enter
datetimes. What I want is to be able to implement these while still
retaining the niceties of the built-in input helpers, like
ActiveRecord error handling and automatic reconstitution of a single
Date object from multiple form elements. What''s the best way to go
about this?
Long story: My form has one standard month <select> input, a 2
character text <input> for year, a similar text <input> for both
hour
and minute, a <select> for AM/PM and, the coup de''gr?ce: two more
text
<input>s for a second time that my app will calculate date 2 our of
based off of date 1.
Anyway, I was thinking of simply overriding the select_xxx() methods
in DateHelper, but they''re all geared around <select> tags and
I''m not
sure how much of the class hierarchy I''ll have to dig up to get a
similar method but with <input>. Also, (and correct me if I''m
wrong,)
the select_xxx methods don''t support highlighting themselves on
ActiveRecord errors since they''re not bound to any specific model
object. So I would have to add that to my own method, too. And I can''t
just override datetime_select since my fields need to be flexibly
positioned, and not just one big <div>.
Ideally, I''d just do something like my_day_input(@date1),
my_hour_input(@date1), my_minute_input(@date1) and then just access
@date1 in the receiving controller method and have it be a valid Date.
So if you had to implement the above, how would you go about doing it?
I''m having trouble getting a foothold in this seemingly complex
problem.
--
-Matt Torok
