Rails - Sep 2007 - habtm - controlling with checkboxes UI

I need to put an array of checkboxes on a user profile editing form to 
allow users to self-select which neighborhoods they are interested in 
from the available neighborhoods. But I can''t figure out the syntax to 
put in the view to make the neighborhood.id''s translate into actual 
Neighborhood objects that makes AR happy. 

The error I am getting from the below code is "Neighborhood expected, 
got String". The Neighborhood id''s are coming in just fine, but
the
update_attributes() method just sees them as strings with no meaning. 
Which would be fine if it would just put them in the DB and not get all 
huffy...


# The list of checkboxes looks like this:
<% for hood in @hoods %>
   <div class="search-hoods">
     <input type="checkbox" name="user[sale_alerts][]"
value="<%=
hood.id %>" id="neighborhood_id-<%= hood.id %>" />
     <%=h hood.name %>
    </div>
<% end %>

# here is the AccountController:
#
# profile viewing or editing
def profile
  @user = current_user
  @hoods = Neighborhood.find(:all, :order=>:name)
  return unless request.post?

  if @user.update_attributes(params[:user])
    flash[:notice] = ''your account was successfully updated.''
    redirect_to :action => ''profile''
  else
    render :action => ''profile''
  end
end

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_and_belongs_to_many :sale_alerts, :class_name =>
"Neighborhood"
  ...
end


Thanks a Bunch!
Sam

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I had some problems in my view with the ids

I usally do this

tabel.id.to_s

and maybe you gotta go through them and convert them to integer again

params[:user][:sale_alerts].each do |i|
    params[:user][:sale_alerts][i] = i.to_i
end

PS: nothing tested
-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

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On Monday 03 September 2007, Jamal Soueidan wrote:
> 
> I had some problems in my view with the ids
> 
> I usally do this
> 
> tabel.id.to_s
> 
> and maybe you gotta go through them and convert them to integer again
> 
> params[:user][:sale_alerts].each do |i|
>     params[:user][:sale_alerts][i] = i.to_i
> end
Hi, the problem isn''t with strings<->int, it''s with row
IDs -> actual AR
objects.

I ended up adding methods to the User model as such:

  def sale_alerts_hood_ids=(a)
    self.sale_alerts = a.collect! { |id| Neighborhood.find(id) }
  end

  def sale_alerts_hood_ids
    return self.sale_alerts.collect { |sa| sa.neighborhood_id.to_i }
  end



and if in the view I put 

  <% for hood in @hoods %>
    <input type="checkbox"
name="user[sale_alerts_hood_ids][]"
value="<%= hood.id %>" <%=
(@user.sale_alerts_hood_ids.include?
(hood.id))? ''checked="true"'' : ''''
%> />
  <% end %>

then it seems to work. But this does a lot of find() calls potentially, 
and seems like kind of a PITA. Having a HABTM with this kind of UI is 
pretty common, I wonder if there is a more elegant solution?

Or maybe, this is sorta elegant. Maybe there is some way to DRY it up 
though in case I need to use this UI with a different combo of objects. 
But that''s outside my Rails comfort zone for now.

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