Rails - Aug 2006 - How do I sort the drop-down list?

I''ve added a drop-down list of first and last names of borrowers to a 
form. How do I sort them by LastName, FirstName in the drop-down?

I''m using code based on the cookbook example:
 <select name="borrower[borrower_id]">
	<% @borrowers.each do |borrower| %>
	<option value="<%= borrower.id %>">
	  <%= borrower.FirstName << " " <<  borrower.LastName
%>
	</option>
	<% end %>
 </select>

Thanks from a raw newbie,
Shauna

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

Disclaimer: I''m fairly new to ruby and rails myself, so there is likely
a better way to do this, but I would sort the list in my controller and 
then pass the sorted list to the view for the drop down list.

In the controller:

def yourAction
  Borrower.find(:all, :order => "LastName DESC").each do |borrower|
    @borrowers = Array.new
    @borrowers << borrower.LastName + borrower.FirstName
  end
end


In the view:

<%= select("borrowers", "borrower_id",
options_for_select(@borrowers) %>

Hope that gets you going in the right direction.  There are some 
explanations of this in the API docs:

api.rubyonrails.org

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

On 18 Aug 2006, at 11:46 pm, Shauna wrote:
> I''ve added a drop-down list of first and last names of borrowers
to a
> form. How do I sort them by LastName, FirstName in the drop-down?
I''d do it something like this. In the controller, make a special  
collection called @borrowers_for_select:

@borrowers = Borrower.find(:all, :order => "last_name, first_name")
@borrowers_for_select = @borrowers.map{|b| [b.first_name + '' ''
+
b.last_name, b.id]}

Then in the view use:

<%= select(:loan, :borrower_id, @borrowers_for_select,  
{:include_blank => true}) %>

There''s a lot going on here, so let''s work backwards.

First, the ''select'' helper in the view. This constructs the
entire
<select><option></option>...</select> lump for you. The
parameters are:

1. The name of the object that this input refers to (in this case,  
it''s @loan).
2. The name of the attribute in that object that this input refers to  
(in this case, it''s @loan.borrower_id).
3. A list of choices, formatted as an array of arrays:

[ [name1, value1],
   [name2, value2],
   [name3, value3], ...]

where each ''name'' is what appears in the drop-down list in the
browser, and each ''value'' is what actually gets submitted when
you
submit the form. So in your case, we want to put first_name+last_name  
into the names, and the borrower IDs into the values.

Also note that the order of this array determines the order that the  
choices will appear in the drop-down list.

4. Misc. options, which in this case is the option :include_blank,  
which inserts a blank choice at the top of the list.

Now let''s look at the code in the controller. This line:

Borrower.find(:all, :order => "last_name, first_name")

finds all of your borrowers, and then orders them by their last name  
and then their first name. It''s generally neater to have your  
database do the sorting for you wherever possible, rather than  
sorting the array yourself.

Then, this line:

@borrowers.map{|b| [b.first_name + '' '' + b.last_name, b.id]}

uses the ''map'' method of Array to transform the array of
Borrower
objects into the format that we want for the ''select'' helper
in the
view. The ''map'' method iterates through each member of
@borrowers,
takes the result of the block (which in our case assembles a mini- 
array for each borrower that looks like [name, id]), and slots it  
into a new array. In other words, ''map'' is a way of applying a
given
bit of code to each member of an array.

Then, we have a @borrowers_for_select which is in the right format  
for the ''select'' helper in the view.

Does that all make sense? Let us know if you have any questions.

Chris

P.S. I''ve just realised that I used the style
''first_name'' for your
column names instead of what you''ve got, which is
''FirstName''. Change
as necessary (although if you want to be really Railsish you could  
change your column names to the standard_rails_convention!).