Rails - Dec 2005 - creating a pulldown entry on the fly

My first ROR app is coming along nicely.  This is definately a agile env.

One of my last issues before inhouse deployment is creating pulldown
entries on the fly.

In particular, I''m writing a job tracking app for my company.  We
mostly do jobs for the same customers (law firms), so I have a pull
down of law firms which is populated from a law_firms table.  i.e
assume only 2 tables for now: jobs and law firms.

On the jobs new/edit form I want to have the ability to setup a new
client law firm if they don''t already exist.

Is there a standard way to do this?

I''ve created a "verify law firm" button that calls the
:controller =>
law_firm, :action => list method.  From there I don''t have a nice
way
to get back to the job new/edit form.

I guess I could put a link back to the form, but any data entry
already done would be lost.

Thanks
Greg
--
Greg Freemyer
The Norcross Group
Forensics for the 21st Century

>On the jobs new/edit form I want to have the ability to setup a new
>client law firm if they don''t already exist.
>
>Is there a standard way to do this?
>
>I''ve created a "verify law firm" button that calls the
:controller =>
>law_firm, :action => list method.  From there I don''t have a
nice way
>to get back to the job new/edit form.
>
>I guess I could put a link back to the form, but any data entry
>already done would be lost.
>  
>

Your question is basically what I asked a few days ago.  It''s quite 
subtle really

You can either stash some data in the session, or in a hidden field on 
the page, and then redirect around.  The problem with putting it 
straight into the hash is that if your user is using two browser windows 
then the data starts overlapping so you probably want to think about 
putting the data in a hash in the session where the key is something 
unique and stashing the key in a hidden field

If you stash the data on the form then you need to keep revalidating it 
because someone could alter it and post it back.  If you stash it in the 
session then you need to figure out how to purge down the session data 
which accumulates from time to time... Bit of a pain either way!  I 
guess other options would be to save it in the DB with an "incomplete"
flag and then finalise the save when you get the law_firm id fields.

Also, I think you could also just modify the existing form so that it 
has both jobs and lawfirms on the same page, then show/hide great chunks 
of the fields so that you can effectively jump from one to the other 
until you have all the data entered.  This also means you can atomically 
commit everything quite easily and there is no serialisation required

It''s an interesting problem though.  Would be interested to hear how
you
or others solve it

Ed W

P.S See previous posts about "multiple screens called before save"

On 12/28/05, Ed W <lists-XJavvHiACVh0ubjbjo6WXg@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
>
> >On the jobs new/edit form I want to have the ability to setup a new
> >client law firm if they don''t already exist.
> >
> >Is there a standard way to do this?
> >
> >I''ve created a "verify law firm" button that calls
the :controller =>
> >law_firm, :action => list method.  From there I don''t have
a nice way
> >to get back to the job new/edit form.
> >
> >I guess I could put a link back to the form, but any data entry
> >already done would be lost.
> >
> >
>
>
> Your question is basically what I asked a few days ago.  It''s
quite
> subtle really
>
> You can either stash some data in the session, or in a hidden field on
> the page, and then redirect around.  The problem with putting it
> straight into the hash is that if your user is using two browser windows
> then the data starts overlapping so you probably want to think about
> putting the data in a hash in the session where the key is something
> unique and stashing the key in a hidden field
>
> If you stash the data on the form then you need to keep revalidating it
> because someone could alter it and post it back.  If you stash it in the
> session then you need to figure out how to purge down the session data
> which accumulates from time to time... Bit of a pain either way!  I
> guess other options would be to save it in the DB with an
"incomplete"
> flag and then finalise the save when you get the law_firm id fields.
>
> Also, I think you could also just modify the existing form so that it
> has both jobs and lawfirms on the same page, then show/hide great chunks
> of the fields so that you can effectively jump from one to the other
> until you have all the data entered.  This also means you can atomically
> commit everything quite easily and there is no serialisation required
>
> It''s an interesting problem though.  Would be interested to hear
how you
> or others solve it
>
> Ed W
>
> P.S See previous posts about "multiple screens called before
save"
I think AJAX is effectively the same as your suggestion to have excess
fields and hide the ones not in use.  I will be trying to go that
route, but I just got some user feedback and they want some added
functionality prior to worrying about that aspect.

Thanks
Greg
--
Greg Freemyer
The Norcross Group
Forensics for the 21st Century