Rails - Apr 2006 - Updating a form containing array of text fields with has_many/belongs_to relation?

I''ve got a User class and an Employer class set up as follows:

User.rb:
has_many :employers

Employer.rb
belongs_to :user


My tables are as follows:

mysql> select id,first_name,last_name from  users limit 5;
+-----+------------+-----------+
| id  | first_name | last_name |
+-----+------------+-----------+
| 711 | Patrick    | Stewart     |
| 714 | Larry   | Davis   |


mysql> select * from employers limit 5;
+----+----------+--------------------+--------------------------+--------+
| id | user_id | employer_name      | position                 | months |
+----+----------+--------------------+--------------------------+--------+
|  1 |      711 | Test Company        | Administrative Assistant |      12 |
|  2 |      711 | Company 2             | Recruiter                |
15|
|  3 |      711 | Apple                  | Developer      |      0 |
|  4 |      711 | test                      | test position
|      0 |
|  5 |      714 | Google   | programmer         |      0 |
+----+----------+--------------------+--------------------------+--------+

I''d like to provide a single form with an array of fields for
employer_name,
position and months, so that I can allow a user to update/create their
employer information, but I can''t figure out how to get rails to
automagically create the associations between the user object and the
employer object.  Right now my form partial looks like this:

_employers.rhtml:
<tr>
     <td><%= text_field ''employer'',
''employer_name''  %></td>
     <td><%= text_field ''employer'',
''position'' %></td>
     <td><%= text_field ''employer'',
''months'' %></td>
</tr>

but I need some way to add the user''s id to the employer record when
it''s
created.  I was hoping I could do something like this:

<%= text_field ''user'',
''employer[employer_name][]'' %>

but it doesn''t work.. (undefined method
`employer[employer_name][]'' for
#<User:0x888595c>).  So it looks like I may have to take care of the
associations and record updating manually, but I just thought I''d check
with
the list to see if there might be something I''m missing.

if anyone has any suggestions, please let me know.  Thanks,

Mike
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL:
http://wrath.rubyonrails.org/pipermail/rails/attachments/20060424/319161fa/attachment-0001.html