Question

The problem I’m having is that when I’m using fields_for in a nested form, it’s generating the fields with the wrong name.

The simplified models are:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_one :owned_account, :class_name => "Account", :foreign_key => "user_id"
  accepts_nested_attributes_for :owned_account
  attr_accessible :email, ... :owned_account, :owned_account_attributes
end

class Account < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :owner, :class_name => 'User', :foreign_key => 'user_id'
  attr_accessible :subdomain
end

In the view (this is a Devise view by the way)

<%= form_for(resource, :as => resource_name, :url => registration_path(resource_name)) do |f| %>
  <div class="inputs">
    <% resource.build_owned_account %>
    <%= f.fields_for resource.owned_account do |a| %>
      <p>
      <%= a.label :subdomain, "Account handle" %>
      <%= a.text_field :subdomain %>
      </p>
    <% end %>
    <p>
...
<% end %>

The markup it generates is:

  <p>
  <label for="user_account_subdomain">Account handle</label>
  <input id="user_account_subdomain" name="user[account][subdomain]" size="30" type="text">
  </p>

So it’s generating user[account][subdomain] instead of user[owned_account][subdomain]. I’ve tried overriding the name of the field but could seem to get that to work.

Any help would be most appreciated, thanks in advance.

Answer 1

In order to trigger the nested attributes magicness you need to do

f.fields_for :owned_account do |account_fields|

If you give an actual instance of account rails doesn’t know that it’s the one relating to the owned_account association