Hi. I'm having problems wrapping my head around the use of HABTM. I just haven't found a good enough reference for dealing with HABTM-linked models, and my business logic is full of them.
In this case, I have a model Initative and a model called Reference for associating one or more reference documents to an Initative. Any Reference document could also be referenced by any number of Initatives. So Initative has objects/columns Initative_ID and also Ref_Num:String. I have declared HABTM in each model.
I need a straighforward way for a user to enter associated documents from the context of an Initative record form. I would think that an editable dropdown would be one way, which would allow the user to select a Reference already in the database or allow them to enter a new one. I also would settle for some version of a text field or text area with a "Add Reference" button. I would even consider a popup form with some version of these controls.
Being that all of the HABTM references I have seen seem to be really checkbox-focused, I haven't really seen anything that gives me a good idea how to go about this. I have done similar things in Access and Notes, but can't quite figure out the HABTM syntax well enough to do it in Rails.
Help?
