Rails - Feb 2006 - How to pre-populate Edit form in rails?

In our rails application, there is a model called Essay and another 
called Tag. Essay ''has_and_belongs_to_many'' tags. When a user
CREATEs an
essay, he gives the text in a text field which corresponds to a database 
column in the essays table. The _form.rhtml also provides a text area 
that lets the user tag the essay with keywords. The text area does not 
correspond directly to any single column in the essays table. The text 
is parsed and used to populate the tags table and set relations between 
the essay and the tags.

This works when I create a new essay. When I try to EDIT and essay, I 
would like to see the previously entered tags. This means the Tags text 
area should be pre-populated. How do I do this?

Thanks,
Yash

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Yash wrote:
> In our rails application, there is a model called Essay and another 
> called Tag. Essay ''has_and_belongs_to_many'' tags. When a
user CREATEs an
> essay, he gives the text in a text field which corresponds to a database 
> column in the essays table. The _form.rhtml also provides a text area 
> that lets the user tag the essay with keywords. The text area does not 
> correspond directly to any single column in the essays table. The text 
> is parsed and used to populate the tags table and set relations between 
> the essay and the tags.
> 
> This works when I create a new essay. When I try to EDIT and essay, I 
> would like to see the previously entered tags. This means the Tags text 
> area should be pre-populated. How do I do this?
> 
<%= text_field_tag ''essay_tags'',
	@essay.tags.collect{|t| t.name}.join('','') %>

That''s assuming that you''re splitting your tags on commas, of
course...

-- 
Alex