Rails - Jun 2005 - Populating Data on a Foreign Table

the scenario...

three tables, thusly:

widgets
-------
id
widget_color_id
widget_style_id

widget_colors
-------------
id
color

widget_style
------------
id
style


the data:

widgets
-------
1 2 1
2 1 3
3 3 2

widget_colors
-------------
1 blue
2 red
3 green

widget_styles
-------------
1 smooth
2 round
3 broken

so, putting the associations together, we have in widgets:
1 red smooth
2 blue broken
3 green round

the reality...

if I populate a form view with dropdowns for colors and
styles using options_from_collection_for_select, I can 
quite nicely create a new widget by selecting the appropriate 
values and clicking "Submit".

the wishlist...

is it possible to instead of a dropdown have a textbox 
where the user can enter *any* color or style, and have 
both the widget table AND the foreign table update with 
the entered info?  

for example, user enters "yellow" in one textbox and
"smashed"
in the other... widget_colors adds row "yellow", widget_styles 
adds row "smashed," and widgets adds row "4 4" (pointing to
the
foreign table ids).

looking through the ActiveRecord documentation, I''m not sure 
if this is possible.  right now, I have separate pages to add 
additional widget colors and styles, which is ok from an admin 
standpoint but i''d like to make it more centralized for end-users.  

right now i don''t care about validation or duplicate entries, 
I just want to know if it is possible.  Thanks!

I usually do something like:

class WidgetStyle < ...
  def self.find_or_create(name)
     find_by_name(name) || create(:name => name)
  end
end

Then, given a name (from your text input), it either finds an existing
record with that name or creates a new one and gives that back to you.

-d.
> is it possible to instead of a dropdown have a textbox
> where the user can enter *any* color or style, and have
> both the widget table AND the foreign table update with
> the entered info?
> 
> for example, user enters "yellow" in one textbox and
"smashed"
> in the other... widget_colors adds row "yellow", widget_styles
> adds row "smashed," and widgets adds row "4 4"
(pointing to the
> foreign table ids).