Link To New Association

rubyonrails-talk
1

Hey there,

I have a patients model which has many hospitalizations, from the patients#show I want to generate a link to hospitalizations#new creating a new association to this very same patient, any ideas on how to do that? I want it to when I get to the hospitalizations#ne I be able to manipulate the output the patient data in the generated view and submit a Patient.hospitalizations.create, how would be the best approach for that?

Thanks in advance,

2

Further updates on my question above:

what if I have a helper method to store the “current_patient”, having always the last patient from my search query and on my hospitalizations_controller I build the Create method something like this: @hospitalization = current_patient.hospitalizations.new(hospitalization_params) ? Would this be the best way to work around this?

3

Further updates on my question above:

what if I have a helper method to store the “current_patient”, having always the last patient from my search query and on my hospitalizations_controller I build the Create method something like this: @hospitalization = current_patient.hospitalizations.new(hospitalization_params) ? Would this be the best way to work around this?

This is a great use case for nested resource routing - you aren’t just trying to make a hospitalization, you’re trying to make one for a particular patient. So instead of a route like:

/hospitalizations/new

you’d want to use:

/patients/:patient_id/hospitalizations/new

One way to read this is “make a new hospitalization for the patient :patient_id”.

To do this in the routes file, you’d have something like:

resources :patients do

resources :hospitalizations

end

You can make a link to the new page with something like (in an ERB template):

link_to “New Hospitalization”, new_patient_hospitalization_path(@patient)

assuming you’ve got the desired patient record in @patient.

–Matt Jones

4

Thanks for the reply. That would mean building a namespace like Patients > Hospitalization? Nesting Hospitalization inside Patients, right? Will try this. For now I had solved this issue storing the patient_id in the session, any information on this solution? If it’s ok or not to use it like that?

5

Also checkout accepted_nested_resource I think it is? I’m on my phone currently…this would be placed in your model

–Rob

6

That sounds like a bad idea. What if the user has more than one window open, or manages to use the back button to get to a hospitalization for a different patient?

I'd think that patient_id for a new hospitalization ought to go into a hidden field in the form.

7

Nested resource is the way to go.

–Rob

8

Some resources: I was wrong. It’s accepts_nested_attributes_for . Sorry, case of not having Google available to me.

[http://asciicasts.com/episodes/196-nested-model-form-part-1](http://asciicasts.com/episodes/196-nested-model-form-part-1)

[http://asciicasts.com/episodes/197-nested-model-form-part-2](http://asciicasts.com/episodes/197-nested-model-form-part-2)

[http://robots.thoughtbot.com/accepts-nested-attributes-for-with-has-many-through](http://robots.thoughtbot.com/accepts-nested-attributes-for-with-has-many-through)

[http://railscasts.com/episodes/196-nested-model-form-part-1](http://railscasts.com/episodes/196-nested-model-form-part-1)

This should help you with your problem. You need to do nested

resources…it’s the right thing to do. PS railscasts is a handy resource to have at hand. Ryan Bates needs to start doing them again!

--rob