Question

I’m building a multi-step form in rails. It’s not javascript driven, so each page has its own controller action like “step1” “step2” etc. I know how to do multi-step wizards through JQuery but I don’t know how to keep rails validations per page without getting into javascript, hence this way.

Anyways, my model is a User object but I’m storing all my variables in an arbitrary Newuser variable and using the following in the view:

<% form_for :newuser, :url => { :action => "step3" } do |u| %>

In the controller, I merge the current page’s info with the overall hash using:

session[:newuser].merge!(params[:newuser])

This works great except that if the user clicks back to a previous page, the fields are no longer populated. How do I keep them populated? Do I need to change the object in the form_for to somehow refer to the session[:newuser] hash?

EDIT:

I guess I’m looking for more info on how form_for autopopulates fields within the form. If it’s not built around a model but an arbitrary hash (in this case, session[:newuser]), how do I get it to autopopulate?

Answer 1

What about still using a class for your population?

class User
  attr_accessor :credit_card, :name, :likes_fried_chicken

  def initialize(options = {})
    options.each do |key, value|
      self.send("#{key}=", value)
    end
  end
end

you could use some tableless model functions here if you wanted to include some validations.

Then in your controller steps:

def step_one
  @user = User.new(session[:new_user])
end

your forms should continue to work.

Another option is just to set the value of the form objects directly from your session hash

- form_for :user, :url => step_2_path do |f|
  = f.text_field :name, :value => session[:new_user][:name]