Question

Initially I created Exercises to browse. Then I added the ability to record “log_entries” against them.

This works for that

  = semantic_form_for @exercise do |exercise|
    = exercise.semantic_fields_for :log_entries do |log_entry|
      = render 'log_entries/log_entry_fields', :f => log_entry
    .links
      = link_to_add_association 'Add Set', exercise, :log_entries, :partial => "log_entries/log_entry_fields", :data => {:role => "button", :icon => "plus"}
    = exercise.buttons do
      = exercise.commit_button "Apply", :button_html => {:data => {:icon => "check", :theme => "b"}}
      = link_to "Cancel", "", :data => {:rel => "back", :icon => "delete", :role => "button", :theme => "a"}

I now added the requirement of needing it to be associated to a user. I’m not sure how to do that in the best manner. This is posting to the exercise controller now, and an exercise isn’t really associated with a user. So in the exercise controller I could merge the params in, but that seems hackish.

The proper way would be to create the log entry association through the user, right? But how would I restructure the form to make that work?

I probably shouldn’t be using the exercise controller anymore either for that since it’s creating log_entries, and then in the LogEntryController the user can be set through there… but what’s the best way to do this? For some reason I can’t figure out how to pass in the workout to the log_entries controller and then have the collection render in the form like shown.

Maybe I’m brain pooped from coding all day. Thanks!

I’m using the Cocoon library for the add association functionality.

Answer 1

You don’t need a gem to accomplish this. Consider the following associations:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :log_entries
end

class Exercise < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :log_entries
end

class LogEntry < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :user
  belongs_to :exercise
end

And the following deeply-nested routes:

YourApp::Application.routes.draw do
  resources :users do
    resources :exercises do
      resources :log_entries
    end
  end
end

Which would result in a new link looking like this (long, I know):

<%= link_to new_user_exercise_log_entry_path(user, exercise) %>

where user and exercise are the user and exercise objects that the log_entry will belong to. The resource part of your URI would look something like this, for example:

/users/1/exercises/1/log_entries/new

Note, that it’s the log_entry form that you should be submitting, not the exercise form.

And you wouldn’t have to do anything special with your log_entry form. Since the relations exist between the models and the routes are nested, you can simply access the params[:user_id] and params[:exercise_id] in your log_entry controller action and assign them to your new log_entry object there.