Question

I’m using the Rails select() form helper to generate a <select> structure. The following line works, but results in an unsorted list. How would I change the sort order to ascending alphabetical?

<%= select('category', 'name', Category.all.collect { |category| [ category.name ] }) %>

Answer 1

You should use the Rails 3 way:

<%= select('category', 'id',
            Category.order('name ASC').all.map{ |c| [c.name, c.id] }) %>

This will generate the HTML options for each category like following:

<option value="1">CategoryName</option>

Where the value is the Category id and not its name:

You will get the params[:category_id] instead of params[:category] which would be a string containing the category name. Then to find a Category in the DB, it’s much better to use an id (because they are unique, not like names) and its faster!