FormOption Helper for Group Select

rubyonrails-talk
1

I am trying to generate the Form Select with the OPTGROUP tags, from a simple array. For example I have an array : [Acer, laptop, 1], [Acer, monitor, 2], [HP, desktop, 3], [HP, printer,4]

I know how to use the Select helper to generate the Select - Option tags from an array. But I just couldn't figure out how to do with the OPTGROUP tag.

I would like to produce the final result from the array as:

<optgroup label="Acer">     <option value="1">laptop</option>     <option value="2">monitor</option>     ...   </optgroup>   <optgroup label="HP">     <option value="3" >Desktop</option>     <option value="4">Printer</option>     ...   </optgroup>

I know there is a helper called option_groups_from_collection_for_select. But from what I understand this helper is only based on the object relationships of its arguments. I would like to generate from a simple array, using a helper.

I have spend hours trying to figure this out but without success. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Steve

2

I am trying to generate the Form Select with the OPTGROUP tags, from a simple array. For example I have an array : [Acer, laptop, 1], [Acer, monitor, 2], [HP, desktop, 3], [HP, printer,4]

I know how to use the Select helper to generate the Select - Option tags from an array. But I just couldn't figure out how to do with the OPTGROUP tag.

You've just got completely the wrong data structure. Either coerce
your data into the form expected by
option_groups_from_collection_for_select (eg use some structs; you may
find group_by helpful) or just do it all by hand

Fred

3

Fred, thanks for your input. Having spending sometime understanding option_groups_from_collection_for_select, I agreed with you that my data structure above was all wrong.

Let me try again to describe my problem after approaching the problem differently.

I am trying to have a Select dropdown by groups whereby the content of this dropdown would be the names that come from a data table called User with the following attribs.

  class User < ActiveRecord::Base     # attribs: id, name, location   end

I have tried using the option_groups_from_collection_for_select as follows:

option_groups_from_collection_for_select(User.find(:all), User.find(:all, :order => 'location DESC, name'), :location, :name, :name)

hoping to get something like the following result:

<optgroup label="CA">     <option value="Henry">Henry</option>     <option value="James">James</option>     ...   </optgroup>   <optgroup label="TX">     <option value="Gordon">Gordon</option>     <option value="Sally">Sally</option>     <option value="Thomas">Thomas</option>     ...   </optgroup>

This doesn't seem to be correct. If someone could help point out what I am not doing right, that would be most appreciated.

Thanks in advance.