Question

I currently have this action to create an object.

def create 
  @campaign = Campaign.create(params[:campaign])
  respond_with(@campaign)
end  

Since I’m using rails3-jquery-autocomplete to create an autocomplete for users to type in the username, I’m receiving the username as string and I’ll need it to convert to id to save it as user_id:integer.

I’m not sure how to run code before the create action is triggered.

Answer 1

You might want to use before_filter method, provided by Rails.

class CampaignsController < ApplicationController
  before_filter :intercede, only: :create

  # some other actions here

  def create 
    @campaign = Campaign.create(params[:campaign])
    respond_with(@campaign)
  end

  private

  def intercede
    # let's do some hacking with params here
  end
end