Rails form_for loop with nested resources

Question

I have three resources: Jobs, Questions and Answers.
The relationships are: Job has many questions; Question has many Answers.

I have created a nested form on the Jobs form view, which includes the creation of jobs and questions. Those are both going to be behind an admin wall, but I want the users to answer the questions through a form on the answers form view (not behind a wall).

The problem I am facing is that I want to create a loop for the answers form fields.

Since this is a loop and there will be more than 1 answer field, I want the questions to dynamically render as the answer form labels. This would be reflective of the path so ~~jobs/1/questions/1/answers/new~~(EDIT: this should be jobs/1/answers/new) would show all of the questions with a job_id of 1.

How do I go about doing this? I was thinking of using a new action like this in the answers controller ( which i'm positive is very wrong):

def new
  @answer = Answer.new
  10.times do
     @job = Job.find(params[:job_id])
     @question = @job.questions.find(params[:question_id])
     @answer = @question.answers.build(params[:answer])
  end
end

And here is my current answers form:

<%= form_for(@answer, :url => job_question_answers_path(@job, @question)) do |f| %>
   <% f.fields_for :answers do |builder| %>
        <%= builder.label @question.question %>
        <%= builder.text_area :answer, :rows => 10 %>
    <% end %>

<%= f.submit "Create" %>
<% end %>

Let me know if you need any more info and thanks for the help!

jobs/1/questions/1/answers/new Looks like it would be creating an answer to a single question from a single job. Or are you trying to display all questions when creating an answer? — Kyle Patterson
Ah you are right, I am trying to display all questions for that job when creating an answer. So it should be /jobs/1/questions/answers/new or rather jobs/1/answers/new ? — Igrabes

Igrabes Igrabes · Accepted Answer · 2011-07-20T05:14:46

So I figured out how to get this working and I did it using the railscasts episode:http://railscasts.com/episodes/196-nested-model-form-part-1.

I was aware of this fix to begin with, but I held back from using it because the function of my app is to allow the admins to create jobs and questions (behind a wall) and then have the users answer those respective questions. I figured that if I nested the answers form under the job and questions form, I wouldn't be able to create this admin/user functionality (that is my next feat).

I basically just nested the answers form under the questions form on the job/new action. It looks like this:

<%= form_for(@job) do |f| %>
 <%= f.label :name %><br />
 <%= f.text_field :name %>
  <%= f.fields_for :questions do |builder| %>
   <%= render 'question_fields', :f => builder %>
  <% end %>
 <%= f.submit %>
<% end %>

With the question partial being:

<%= f.label :question, "Question" %>
 <%= f.text_area :question, :rows => 10 %>
 <%= f.check_box :_destroy %>
 <%= f.label :_destroy, "Remove Question" %>

  <%= f.fields_for :answers do |builder| %>
   <%= render 'partials/answer_fields', :f => builder %>
  <% end %>

And the answers partial being:

 <%= f.label "Answer" %>
 <%= f.text_area :answer, :rows => 10 %>
 <%= f.hidden_field :question_id, :value => @question %>
 <%= f.hidden_field :job_id, :value => @job.id %>

I had to make a change in the Jobs#new method:

def new
 @job = Job.new
 10.times do
   question = @job.questions.build 
   1.times { question.answers.build }
 end
respond_to do |format|
  format.html # new.html.erb
  format.xml  { render :xml => @job }
end
end

Lastly my associations in the models needed to include

accepts_nested_attributes_for

Like so:

Models

class Job < ActiveRecord::Base
 has_many :questions
 has_many :answers

 accepts_nested_attributes_for :questions, :allow_destroy => true
 accepts_nested_attributes_for :answers, :allow_destroy => true
end

class Question < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :job
  has_many :answers

  accepts_nested_attributes_for :answers 
end

class Answer < ActiveRecord::Base
 belongs_to :job
 belongs_to :question
end

This solution is saving my answers but now I need to use that partial in another view to fulfill the functionality that I was attempting with the admin/user actions.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Rails form_for loop with nested resources

1 Answers