Question

I have a form for a nested resource (Client :has_many Workouts) that I want to pre-populate based on some user input (I use this input to set up some other default parameters for the new action).

<%  form_tag new_client_workout_path(@workout_user) do%>
    <%= date_select nil, :date %>
    <%= submit_tag 'Enter New Workout' %><br/>
<% end %>

If I submit this form I get the following error.

ActionController::MethodNotAllowed Only get, put, and delete requests are allowed.

I can update the form’s method to get, which works, but then I have all of my form paramters on the query string which I don’t want.

Is there some way to accomplish this using a post?

I’ve done something similar when the resource wasn’t nested and it worked fine.

Answer 1

So, as I understand it, you want a form (as shown) to be sent as a POST to a controller which causes another form to be rendered which is pre-populated with date-directed parameters (from the first form), right?

It’s unconventional but you could just change the new action of your WorkoutsController so accept a POST instead of the conventional GET. In routes.rb

map.resources :clients do |clients|
  clients.resources :workouts, :new => { :new => :post }
end

UPDATE

The clean RESTful way to do something like this is to have a separate controller (working title – ConfigWorkoutsContoller) and actions (new and create) for the first form as follows;

• ConfigWorkoutsContoller#new renders the form (as shown) which is a GET
• Its submit action is a POST to the create action with the date
• ConfigWorkoutsContoller#create pre-populates a @workout instance and renders WorkoutsController#new