Question

I’m using Devise and Active Admin, and so far there are playing nice together. Instead of using the default Active Admin “AdminUser’, I am using my own ‘User’ model, which is sometimes refered to as ‘Author’ within my app.

I’m creating an Article form (Create/Update) and I have a User Select Box that is pre-selected if the record is an update, but not if it is a new record. What I want to do is if I am creating a new record, use the Devise’ ‘current_user’. Since ActiveAdmin is using Formtastic, I found this: https://github.com/justinfrench/formtastic/wiki/Deprecation-of-%3Aselected-option, which basically explains that might be a feature coming, but that this might be best achieved with a before filter, which is where I am stumped now.

Here is my form view:

<%= semantic_form_for [:admin, @article] do |f| %>
    <%= f.inputs "Details" do %> 
        <%= f.input :title %>
        <%=
            f.input :user, :as => :select, :label => 'Author',
            :collection => User.all, :include_blank => false,
            :required => true 
        %>

        <%=
            f.input :categories, :as => :check_boxes, :label => 'Categories',
            :collection => Category.all, :include_blank => 'None',
            :hint => 'Choose all categories that apply.',
            :required => false 
        %>

        <%= f.input :desc, :label => 'Description' %>
        <%= f.input :content, :label => 'Content' %>
    <% end %>
    <%= f.buttons %>
<% end %>

I can pre-selct the current_user using jQuery, something like this:

<script type="text/javascript">
  $(document).ready(function() {
    $('#article_user_id').val(<%= current_user.id %>);
  });
</script>

but this overrides the selected user in the ‘Edit’ view, in which the Author/User has already been assigned… and it also doesn’t seem like Rails way…

Edit:
I found this:
Active Admin: Customize only new form

So based on that, in my view I determine if the Article is a new record or not, and if it is, I wrap the javascript so that it gets put on the page for new articles. This way, on article updates, the user is still selected.

<% if controller.action_name == 'new' %>
  <script type="text/javascript">
  $(document).ready(function() {
    $('#article_user_id').val(<%= current_user.id %>);
  });
  </script>
<% end %>

Again, I don’t think this is the most elegant solution, so if anyone has any comments on a better way (which I’m sure there is), please let me know!

Answer 1

Use a before_filter in your controller…

controller do
  before_filter :assign_user, :only => :new

  private

  def assign_user
    resource.user = current_user
  end
end

This way, when your form is rendered, @article will already have the user id populated via the call to the resource method (which references @article in your case).