Issue with multiple models on one form

rubyonrails-talk
1

So I'm a newbie to Rails and attempting to add multiple models to a form.

I found the Railscast for "Complex Forms, Part 1" at #73 Complex Forms Part 1 - RailsCasts which is from 2007 and at the point where the moderator, Ryan, says "Let's take a look at our code..." and refreshes the UI and in the Railscast we see 3 Tasks below the Project. However, when I refresh my project screen, my code shows a "NoMethodError" in the Controller with an undefined method for the prepsteps that were added. I'm not following the Project/Task models, but am building a Recipe/Preparation Steps models to learn Rails. Not sure what's up except my controller needs a method somewhere. I'm using Rails 2.3.4. Any sugggestions?

Thanks in advance!!

2

From a quick glance at your code, I see that you use prepsteps in your controller and pre_steps in your models.

3

Hi Andrei, Thanks for the quick feedback. I changed all prepsteps to prep_steps, but now I'm getting an uninitialized constant error in my Recipe controller for the following line:     3.times { @recipe.prep_steps.build }

BROWSER DISPLAY:    NameError in RecipesController#new    uninitialized constant Recipe::PrepStep

ERROR FROM THE CONSOLE:   NameError (uninitialized constant Recipe::PrepStep):     app/controllers/recipes_controller.rb:28:in `new'     app/controllers/recipes_controller.rb:28:in `times'     app/controllers/recipes_controller.rb:28:in `new'     -e:1:in `load'     -e:1

I took out the 3.times & curly braces & tried just the "@recipe.prep_steps.build" and I got the same error. I changed the prep_steps to a number of variations (prepsteps, PrepSteps, PrepStep) and got other various errors. Any thoughts? Is the underscore the issue? Thanks in advance! Seth

4

Or as a more general question, I reviewed the Railscast mentioned above & Ryan Bates says that the Railscast shows a way to do multiple models in one form by keeping the code tucked in the models and not the controllers. Since the Railscast was done in 2007, has a preferred method of doing multiple models in one form emerged? Is it preferable to put code in the models keeping the controllers light or is it preferred to put the code in the controllers and keep the models light? Or is this still a design preference for the developer to choose? Thanks in advance for enlightment!

5

To answer your question, I would check out the Wiki page from the Rails Best Practices gem:

http://github.com/flyerhzm/rails_best_practices