Question

I have a form_tag on a “Stream” model which accepts user input as show below:

<%= form_tag('/generate_xml', :method=>'post') do %>
 <p>
 Content:<br />
   <%= text_field_tag "content" %>
 </p>
 <p>
   <%= submit_tag 'Submit' %>
 </p>
<% end %>

The generate_xml action is as below:

def generate_xml
 @content = params[:content]
 builder = Nokogiri::XML::Builder.new do |xml|
 xml.streams {
  xml.content {
   xml.name { xml.text @content }
  }
 }
 end

 file = File.new('dir.xml','w')
 file.puts builder.to_xml
 file.close
end

While I can generate a file dir.xml I do not want this file to be stored locally but in the database directly.How can I do this? I so far have tried generating file-related columns in the “Stream” model(where I want to store the xml files) using paperclip but I stuck about how I can generate a file on the fly and save it to database.

Answer 1

You could store the xml content as a string.

So, do a rails migration to add the string column to your table.

rails g model UserContent xml:string

Then just store it as a string in there:

uc = UserContent.create(:xml => builder.to_xml)