Question

In the app I am building I have a need to combine multiple text fields into a single database column.

For example my “Business” entry has a column “Discount”

The text field I want to read something like this:

<%= f.text_field :discount %> % Off <%= f.text_field :discount %>.  

I want both of these to be entered into the database as a string: “10% Off Shoes” (or whatever).

Is there a way to do this in Rails 3?

Thanks!

**Edit!

I tried Pan Thomakos’s solution (using virtual attributes) and now I am getting the following error:

You have a nil object when you didn't expect it!
You might have expected an instance of Array.
The error occurred while evaluating nil.split
Extracted source (around line #3):

1: 
2: <%= f.label :cost %><br />
3: <%= f.text_field :percentage %> % Off <%= f.text_field :product %>.


app/models/business.rb:11:in `percentage'

I’m not really sure how to handle this! Admittedly I am weak when it comes to working within the model, I probably would have handled this in the controller.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Yes, the best way to do it is to use virtual attributes. Each virtual attribute will keep track of the different parts of the discount and the discount will be the combined field. Here is how I would implement it:

class Business
  attr_writer :percentage, :product

  before_save :create_discount

  def percentage
    @percentage.nil? ? discount.to_s.split('% Off ').first : @percentage
  end

  def product
    @product.nil? ? discount.to_s.split('% Off ').last : @product
  end

  protected

  def create_discount
    discount = "#{@percentage}% Off #{@product}" unless @product.nil? || @percentage.nil?
  end
end

You can then modify your view to:

<%= f.text_field :percentage %> % Off <%= f.text_field :product %>.