Rails - Apr 2006 - getting the value of a form select

I have been working for a whole week on this problem without success, so 
I feel that its now time to give up and ask for some help since it seems 
that I am obvisouly missing something...

all I want to do is having a form with a dropdown menu. When the user 
select a value from the drop down and sumit the value, this value must 
be the new ''active_client''.

Technicaly, when the form is submited from the list page, it calls the 
change_active_client action that take care of changing the client''s ID 
in the session then returns the control to the list action.

My problem is that when I try to output the value stored in the session, 
I get anything but what I expected...

What am I missing?

the simplified version of my code goes like this:

------START_CONTROLER-------
class SpecificController < ApplicationController

  def list
    @active_client = session[:active_client]
    @clients = Client.find_all.collect {|c| [ c.name, c.id ] }

  end

  def change_active_client
    session[:active_client] = params[:client]
    redirect_to(:action => "list")
  end

end
------END_CONTROLER-------

------START_VIEW-----------

<%= form_tag (:action => "change_active_client")%>

	<%= select(:client, :id, @clients) %>
	<input type="submit" value="Change" />

<%= end_form_tag%>

content of the session: <%=h(session[:active_client])%> <br/>
content of the @Active_client: <%=h(@active_client)%>

------END_VIEW---------------

------ABOUT_THE_MODEL------
its a basic table,  with ID as a auto increment int and name as a 
varchar

-----THE OUTPUT OF ABOVE CODE---
something like: id1 or id2, id3, etc... I want to be able to extract the 
name of the client but cant...

This thing is driving me nuts, especially since I am sure this is 
something obvious that I am missing!

Thx!

-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

Alain wrote:
<snip>
> -----THE OUTPUT OF ABOVE CODE---
> something like: id1 or id2, id3, etc... I want to be able to extract the 
> name of the client but cant...
You''ll need to do a Client.find() somewhere to turn the id you get back
from the select box into a Client object.

-- 
Alex

> You''ll need to do a Client.find() somewhere to turn the id you get
back
> from the select box into a Client object.
Thx Alex.

I changed the action change_active_client for this:

  def change_active_client
    session[:active_client] = Client.find(params[:client])
    redirect_to(:action => "list")
  end

when I look at it, it seems right: when the form is submited, we get the 
ID from the client, then look for the row with that ID and assign it to 
:active_client in the session. Unfortunaly, it doesnt work, I get this 
message:

Unknown key(s): id

It seems like the Client.find() method cant extract the ID from the 
session... could the problem be with how I created the select box?

Thx!

-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

I want to use Capistrano w/git, and while I was reading the source for
the other scm adapters it occurred to me maybe somebody has done this
already?

Thanks!
Nate

Hi Alain,

I still real new at this, but I believe you''ll see in the Parameters
section
of the error message you''re getting that your form is returning a hash
of
hashes rather than a simple hash.  I think if you change your current
Client.find(..) to Client.find(params[:client][:id]) you''ll get what
you
need.  Actually, I think it will probably work with session[:active_client]
= params[:client][:id], but I''m not experienced with the use of the
.collect.  I''d be real interested, so I hope you''ll let us
know.

hth,
Bill

Alain wrote:
> I changed the action change_active_client for this:
>
>   def change_active_client
>     session[:active_client] = Client.find(params[:client])
>     redirect_to(:action => "list")
>   end
>
> when I look at it, it seems right: when the form is submited, we get the
> ID from the client, then look for the row with that ID and assign it to
> :active_client in the session. Unfortunaly, it doesnt work, I get this
> message:
>
> Unknown key(s): id
>
> It seems like the Client.find() method cant extract the ID from the
> session... could the problem be with how I created the select box?

Hi Bill,

thank you very much! You solved the problem! I replaced the 
Client.find() for Client.find(params[:client][:id]) and it fixed the 
problem!

Your other option: session[:active_client] = params[:client][:id] did 
not work.

I think I will reread the documentation of .collect to make sure I 
understand what I did wrong...

The only thing is that I cant figure out how to have the updated page 
have the correct value from the select field selected. Right now, it 
resets itself to the first value everytime I return to the page.

Thanks!

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