Form field --display :decimal 0.0 as 0.00, or blank?

rubyonrails-talk
1

Howdy --

I have a price field in my db, :decimal, :null => false, :default => 0

When I open a new form field to create a new record, this value is displayed as "0.0". This is not so pretty for a field in which a price like "123.45" is expected. Ideally I would like to have the field blank (I'll validate for numeric at submit time). I'm aware of the format_as_currency helper, but I am not sure how/if I would use it in a form context.

Bonus question: I am currently validating acceptable characters in a javascript onkeyup event (get rid of anything not a digit, decimal or comma). Is there anything that comes for free that I have missed, or a good plugin out there to help with what I would think is a fairly common use case?

Obviously, I'm a rails noob :slight_smile:

Regards, and thanks!

Tom

2

Thanks. Yes, your solution will fix the display, but...

The migration defines both the type of the object within the Rails context, but also the actual database field definition, right? If I want to have very basic data integrity, using not null, defaults (not to mention explicit foreign key constraints) is a "best practice" which I am pretty sure is still in force in the Rails world.

Any other ideas on how I can change the display of my data without changing the migration and database column definitions?

Thanks!!

Tom

3

Any other ideas on how I can change the display of my data without changing the migration and database column definitions?

you could try overriding the getter in your model:

assuming the field is 'my_number':

def my_number   return nil if self[:my_number].blank? || self[:my_number] == 0   self[:my_number] end