Blanks in date_select need configurable text

rubyonrails-talk
1

I thought I'd mailed this already, but I haven't seen it show up on the list, so I'm mailing it again. My apologies if it does show up twice now.

I want something really simple: I want a date_select that has blanks (:include_blanks works fine so far), but having an empty value in the select box on the webpage is ugly, so I want something more informative there, like "month" or "select a month" or something.

In other words:

<select id="user_birthdate_2i" name="user[birthdate(2i)]"> <option value="">Month</option> <option value="1">January</option> <option value="2">February</option> <option value="3">March</option> <option value="4">April</option> <option value="5">May</option> <option value="6">June</option> <option value="7">July</option> <option value="8">August</option> <option value="9">September</option> <option value="10">October</option> <option value="11">November</option> <option value="12">December</option> </select>

How do I do that? I can't find any way to accomplish this in any docs nor in the source, yet it seems like a really obvious thing to want to do.

Martijn.

2

There is an option prompt like <%= select("model", "status_id", Status.find(:all).collect {|p| [ p.name, p.id ] },options ={:prompt => "<< Select any >>"}) %>

I think you can do similarly

Sijo

3

Doesn't seem to work in date_select. And throwing away the power of date_select in order to handle everything myself seems like a bad idea. I'd rather add this functionality to date_select.

Martijn.

4

There is an option prompt like <%= select("model", "status_id", Status.find(:all).collect {|p| [ p.name, p.id ] },options ={:prompt => "<< Select any >>"}) %>

I think you can do similarly

Doesn't seem to work in date_select. And throwing away the power of date_select in order to handle everything myself seems like a bad idea. I'd rather add this functionality to date_select.

If you're worrying about good UI, date_select is pretty horrible
anyway. Would be something of a lipstick on a pig thing.

Fred

5

Until I needed to add a nil option, date_select worked fine for me. What's so wrong with it (other than this particular issue)? And is there a better alternative availlable?

Thanks, Martijn.

6

There is an option prompt like <%= select("model", "status_id", Status.find(:all).collect {|p| [ p.name, p.id ] },options ={:prompt => "<< Select any >>"}) %>

I think you can do similarly

Doesn't seem to work in date_select. And throwing away the power of date_select in order to handle everything myself seems like a bad idea. I'd rather add this functionality to date_select.

If you're worrying about good UI, date_select is pretty horrible anyway. Would be something of a lipstick on a pig thing.

Until I needed to add a nil option, date_select worked fine for me. What's so wrong with it (other than this particular issue)? And is there a better alternative availlable?

People have a hard time working with stuff like '20th december'. Is
that a saturday or a sunday etc... Or they're thinking in terms of
'next monday' and things like that, in which case it's a lot simpler
if they don't have to do the date maths themselves.

Fred

7

Point taken. But I'm using date_select for birth dates, so for me days of the week aren't much of an issue. I just don't want to force a default birth date on people who are unwilling to provide it. The day-month-year combo of date_select seems perfect for me so far, except for the inability to provide a nice text for the empty value.

Martijn.