Hello,
We posted this message in GitHub a few weeks ago (
https://github.com/rails/rails/issues/16516), and Rafael Franca gently
pointed us at this mailing list. He suggested that we open up the
discussion to see if this feature request would be accepted or not. All
suggestions are welcomed - especially regarding the implementation.
We have various :has_many associations in our application, but we want to
move away from *accepts_nested_attributes* due to an increasingly large and
complex domain and workflow model. We want more control over how model
attributes get updated and are willing to forfeit the convenience of
accepts_nested_attributes. Unfortunately, the *FormBuilder#fields_for*
method doesn't play well with this design decision. As per the
documentation, it requires the parent model to respond to
*"#{association}_attributes="*. This seems unnecessarily restrictive.
In the example provided by the documentation
(http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionView/Helpers/FormBuilder.html#method-i-fields_for):
class Person
def projects
[@project1, @project2]
end
def projects_attributes=(attributes)
# Process the attributes hash
end
end
It would be possible to just inspect *projects* to realize that it is a
collection and treat it the same as nested attributes. The following
snippet contains a one line change that appears to accomplish this (see
SUGGESTED CODE, extracted from *lib/action_view/helpers/form_helper.rb*):
def fields_for(record_name, record_object = nil, fields_options = {}, &block)
fields_options, record_object = record_object, nil if
record_object.is_a?(Hash) && record_object.extractable_options?
fields_options[:builder] ||= options[:builder]
fields_options[:namespace] = options[:namespace]
fields_options[:parent_builder] = self
case record_name
when String, Symbol
# ORIGINAL CODE
# if nested_attributes_association?(record_name)
# END OF ORIGINAL CODE
# SUGGESTED CODE
if nested_attributes_association?(record_name) *||
record_object.respond_to?(:to_ary)*
# END OF SUGGESTED CODE
return fields_for_with_nested_attributes(record_name, record_object,
fields_options, block)
end
else
record_object = record_name.is_a?(Array) ? record_name.last : record_name
record_name = model_name_from_record_or_class(record_object).param_key
end
#...
The suggested modification would yield a more flexible solution without
coupling so tightly to nested attributes. What do you think of the idea
and of this specific solution? Rafael noted that this could break existing
applications, but we fail to see under what scenarios that would happen.
Thoughts?
Thank You.
Jacobo & Ed
Case Commons
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