Question

I’m actually just copying an old question from railsforum as he asked it back in May ’09 and the only reply is the authors own inelegant fix. I wondered if anybody knows of a better way? Otherwise I’m going to end up using javascript to move the hidden field about as he has.

Here’s the original question:

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Hi there!
Grateful for any good advice on this topic:

Is it possible to override Rails’ automatic generation of hidden ID fields in the fields_for for a has_many association? I would like to generate my own so that I can choose where the thing goes.

Here’s why:

I am trying to put a jQuery-ui Accordion widget around a form that looks a bit like this:

<div id="diagram_elements_form">
    <% diagram_form.fields_for :elements do |element_fields| %>
        <% link_to "#" do %>
            <%= element_fields.object.name %>
        <% end %>
        <%= render :partial => "edit_element_base", :locals => { :f => element_fields }  %>
    <% end %>
</div>

the model, simplified, looks like:

class Diagram < ActiveRecord::Base
    has_many :elements
    accepts_nested_attributes_for :elements
end

I think I’ve got the model/controller stuff right because I can CRUD to my heart’s content. But the accordion comes out all screwy.

the jQuery UI/Accordion widget looks for html in the form of:

<div id="accordion">
    <a href="#">First header</a>
    <div>First content</div>
    <a href="#">Second header</a>
    <div>Second content</div>
</div>

This seems like an easy thing to accomplish with rails, but I am really choking.
The tabs show up but are skewed, and finally I realized it’s because of the hidden_field that rails automatically adds for each object in the fields_for. What I wind up with looks like this:

<div id="accordion">
    <input type="hidden" name="...id" value="2" />
    <a href="#">First header</a>
    <div>First content</div>
    <input type="hidden" name="...id" value="3" />
    <a href="#">Second header</a>
    <div>Second content</div>
</div>

… Such that the hidden fields are getting taken as part of the accordion structure. I would like to move the ID fields inside of the DIV tags. Any ideas?

thanks again,
Tyler

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I’m having exactly the same issue as Tyler here. The hidden fields generated by fields_for are messing up the accordion UI and at the moment I can’t see a way to change the position of them except moving them with javascript.

I shall post a link to this back on railsforum so that hopefully Tyler will receive any benefit of your collective wisdom as well.

Regards,

Kevin.

Answer 1

Since Rails 2.3.5 you can place a f.hidden_field(:id) where you would like it to exist, and Rails will fill out the details.

The ticket regarding this change is available here.