Question

I’m trying to use a select_tag helper in Rails 3. I started with a very basic example, copied straight from the documentation:

It seems to produce the correct markup, but the select doesn’t work – clicking it does nothing.

For comparison, I created the same select in HAML. That works fine. Here is the code for both:

-# The select_tag version
= select_tag "count", "<option>1</option><option>2</option><option>3</option><option>4</option>"

-# The HAML version
%select{:name => "count", :id => "count"}
  %option 1
  %option 2
  %option 3
  %option 4

The select_tag seems to produce the options in a string, but not as DOM elements – in Firebug, they are just gray, not syntax-highlighted like the DOM elements in the working select produced by HAML.

What’s the deal?

Answer 1

I figured out the answer just before I posted the question: the string needs to have .html_safe called on it.

Viewing source shows that Rails has turned all the < and > into < and >, because it’s now escaping strings by default. html_safe says “no really, trust me, this one is OK to display as HTML.”

So this makes it work:

= select_tag "count", "<option>1</option><option>2</option><option>3</option><option>4</option>".html_safe

It would be nice if they updated the documentation, but hey, at least the answer is quickly searchable here now. 🙂