Question

I need the user to enter a URL within my form. However, URL is not a column in my database. I get an error with the following form.

I have a form to create a video (new.html.haml)

= form_for @video do |f|
  .field
  = f.label :title
  = f.text_field :title
.field
  = f.label :description
  = f.text_area :description
.field
  = f.label :url
  = f.text_field :url
.field
  Provider
  %br
  = radio_button :video, :provider, 'vimeo'
  = f.label :provider, 'Vimeo', :value => 'vimeo'
  %br
  = radio_button :video, :provider, 'youtube' 
  = f.label :provider, 'Youtube', :value => 'youtube'
%br
.actions
  = f.submit "Add video"

Rails complains that URL is not a column in URL is an unknown method or variable.

What I want to do

Basically, I need to get an URL for the video the user is adding,along with the title of the video, its description and the provider.

All fields have a column in the databse, only URL doesn’t.

I then need to format the URL and call some methods on it. It will create some new output that I will storin the databse.

So from URL, I get provider_video_id, thumb which are databse columns.

**How can I receive the user URL in my form without a dedicated database column?

Answer 1

You need to use a virtual attribute.

Put in your model something like this:

def url=(url)
  @url = url
end

def url
  @url
end