Question

I’ve built a multi-select form (from within form_for) like this:

<div class="rounded-block quarter-wide radio-group">
  <h4>Exclude customers from source:</h4>
  <%= f.select :excluded_sources, options_for_select(User.select(:source).group(:source).order(:source).map {|u| [u.source,u.source]}), {:include_blank => false}, {:multiple => true} %>
  <%= f.error_message_on :excluded_sources %>
</div>

this works well for what I need. The only problem is that when i go back to the page that displays the choices, I don’t see what was previously selected (i.e. what is already in the DB at time of rendering). Is there an easy way to get rails to display what’s previously been selected? I’d MUCH prefer not to switch to check boxes.

in my matching profiles model (corresponding to the table that stores excluded_sources), i have this:

serialize :excluded_sources

Answer 1

this ended up being the relevant piece:

:selected => matching_profile.send(:excluded_sources)

here:

<div class="rounded-block quarter-wide radio-group">
<h4>Exclude customers from source:</h4>
<%= f.select :excluded_sources, options_for_select(User.select(:source).group(:source).order(:source).map {|u| [u.source,u.source]}, :selected => matching_profile.send(:excluded_sources)), {:include_blank => false}, {:multiple => true} %>
<%= f.error_message_on :excluded_sources %>