HTML shortcuts

rubyonrails-talk
1

Corey,

That is the older deprecated way. The new way is:

<% form_tag :action => 'create' do %>   ... <% end %>

Hope this helps.

2

Corey Konrad wrote:

Zack Chandler wrote:

Corey,

That is the older deprecated way. The new way is:

<% form_tag :action => 'create' do %>   ... <% end %>

Hope this helps.

-- Zack Chandler http://depixelate.com

Ok thanks, i still dont see how that new way is a shortcut though, why not just use the normal HTML way? does the form_tag above do something different than the normal HTML <form> tag? It just seems like a way of using ruby to create a form instead of HTML what is the practical difference?

thanks

Dear Zack and Corey,

I am in the same boat as Corey. Don't see much of a shorcut but definitely see a whole lot of confusion. The documentation that i have read so far does not seem to be make it better. In fact, I tried running this code with Rails on Ruby 1.8.6-p383 and got eyeful of complains from the firefox and IE. This after using the old deprecated way and the new way. Is there any documentation that explains all this very well?

Appreciate any help here. Thank you

Muru

3

Corey Konrad wrote:

Zack Chandler wrote:

Corey,

That is the older deprecated way. The new way is:

<% form_tag :action => 'create' do %>   ... <% end %>

Hope this helps.

-- Zack Chandler http://depixelate.com

Ok thanks, i still dont see how that new way is a shortcut though, why not just use the normal HTML way? does the form_tag above do something different than the normal HTML <form> tag?

Yes. It calculates the URL for the form from the controller and action, which is a big help since Rails doesn't use direct URLs much. In addition, if you use form_for, it also creates a FormBuilder object so you can use Rails' helpers for form elements, which automatically pick up values from the object. .

It just seems like a way of using ruby to create a form instead of HTML

It is.

what is the practical difference?

The URL calculation is a big difference.

thanks

Best,

4

And with form_for rails works out for you whether the form's action should be the url for saving or updating the form etc.

It's true that

<%= start_form_tag ({:action => "at"}, {:method => "post"}) %> <%= end_form_tag %>

is not very different from

<form action = "/look/at" method = "post" </form>

but

<% form_for @person do |f| %>   <%= f.label :name %>: <%= f.text_field :name%> <% end %>

is less cumbersome than the alternative.

Fred