I've come across what might be a limitation of rails, or I've missed something completely
Here's the situation:
I have 3 models as follows
class Loan < ActiveRecord::Base has_many :guarantors, :class_name => "Guarantor", :dependent => :destroy
def new_guarantor_attributes=(guarantor_attributes) guarantors.build(guarantor_attributes) end
def existing_guarantor_attributes=(guarantor_attributes) ... end end
class Guarantor < ActiveRecord::Base belongs_to :loan, :class_name => "Loan", :foreign_key => "loan_id" has_one :personal_detail, :dependent => :destroy
def personal_detail_attributes=(attributes) build_personal_detail(attributes) end end
class PersonalDetail < ActiveRecord::Base belongs_to :guarantor, :class_name => "Guarantor", :foreign_key => "guarantor_id" # firstname:string # middlename:string # surname:string end
All the associations work fine, but populating them does not, in my form I have a repeating element generated using javascript, similar to the tasks example found in #75 Complex Forms Part 3 - RailsCasts
The partial I am repeating looks something like this <% fields_for("loan[new_guarantor_attributes] [personal_detail_attributes]", object, &block) -%> <div class="guarantor"> <%= f.text_field :firstname %> <%= f.text_field :middlename %> <%= f.text_field :surname %>
<%= link_to_function "Remove", ... %> </div> <% end -%>
It works fine if I'm only saving attributes of the guarantor, but its fails because no matter which configuration I put the first parameter of fields_for, it either passes an incomplete array, a jumbled array or in the example above, it passes and empty array which looks like this: [{"personal_detail_attributes"=>}, {"personal_detail_attributes"=>}, {"personal_detail_attributes"=>}] As you can see it does not include any of the text_fields
I would have thought that would pass an array of guarantors each with a single personal_detail, something like this: [{"new_guarantor_attributes" => [{"personal_detail_attributes"=>[{"firstname"=>"Bill", "middlename"=>"", "surname"=>"Bloggs"}]}]}, {"new_guarantor_attributes" => [{"personal_detail_attributes"=>[{"firstname"=>"John", "middlename"=>"", "surname"=>"Smith"}]}]}]
Here's the results if I use this config "loan[new_guarantor_attributes] [personal_detail_attributes]" Inputs: 1: firstname: Bill, :lastname: Bloggs 2: firstname: John, :lastname: Smith {"personal_detail_attributes"=>[{"firstname"=>"Bill"}, {"middlename"=>"", "firstname"=>"John"}, {"middlename"=>"", "surname"=>"Bloggs"}, {"surname"=>"Smith"}]}
As you can see the results are jumpled.
Anyway, to the point, here's how I need it to work:
Iterate through each guarantor in guarantor_attributes and build it, and at the same time build each personal_detail (one per guarantor)
Any ideas?