Question

I am currently making a plugin, and I would like to add a method to ActiveView::Helpers::FormHelper, Essentially, the plugin is a helper that will convert checkbox input into bitwise flags so when you do actions like new and update, you can continue to pass in a params hash, and my plugin will pull out the checkbox data and convert it into a single number representing the flag state. Anyway, I want to be able to do something like this:

<% form_for @person do |f| %>
  <%= f.check_boxes_for_flags %>
<% end %>

Which would create checkboxes in the HTML and then set them accordingly to the flags. I know how to add an instance method to ActiveView::Helpers::FormHelper, but I’m not sure how to access @person from this method. Any ideas?

Answer 1

Why wouldn’t you use:

<%= f.check_boxes_for_flags :country %>

That way you can create your extension similar to how the ActiveView helpers work.

Take a look at how check_box_tag in the rails source code gets the name from the model. Try to follow the conventions set forth by the framework, it makes things easier for you and those who will maintain your code after you.