Rails - Aug 2005 - Multi-level objects in form helpers

Say you want to create a form about a City model, which belongs_to
a Country model.  You can have fields like:

	<%= text_field :city, :population %>
	<%= text_field :country, :official_language %>

to make field names city[population] & country[official_language]
and posted params { :city => {:population => 123},
                     :country => {:official_language =>
''English''} }

You then have to move the country object into the city object
if you want to validate and save it as one.

What''s the easiest way to make a tag with name
city[country][official_language] so that the country object gets
put in the city object and you can do automatic associated
validation and saving?  The correct value also needs to be retrieved
to do fill-in.

I couldn''t find a permutation that worked using text_field.
Can it be done, and if not, can the field_helpers be modified
to support this?  Otherwise I''ll have to either construct the
names and values using the text_tag helper, or do the manual
multi-level object manipulation on both get (fill-in) and post.

-- 
We develop, watch us RoR, in numbers too big to ignore.

I made a patch to actionpack code that enables use of compound
objects in form helpers. See the following rails research-patch
ticket: http://dev.rubyonrails.org/ticket/2053

-- 
We develop, watch us RoR, in numbers too big to ignore.