List of html_options available

rubyonrails-talk
1

I've noticed lots of people online complain about not good documentation for Rails. I'm a PHP programmer but I'm a newbie on Rails.

I'm creating a form with a drop-down menu. I finally got to do it. I noticed there is a html_options parameter for select. I was curious as to what other html_options are available but couldn't find a list of options. I have been looking for it at the api http://api.rubyonrails.org but can't seem to find it. Maybe I'm not looking in the right places.

Can somebody please point me to a place in a documentation where I can find a complete list for the different options for html_options parameter?

2

http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/interact/forms.html#edef-SELECT

HTH,

3

Hi,

html_options are just normal attributes you write on to the html-tags like: class, style, onchange and so on.

Greets, Max.

4

Thanks, I hadn't noticed it. But it seems there are other that are not normal attributes.

For example, for select (drop-down menu) you have :prompt => "Select", which is not a normal select attribute.

Maksim Gudovsikov wrote:

5

Thanks, I hadn't noticed it. But it seems there are other that are not normal attributes.

For example, for select (drop-down menu) you have :prompt => "Select", which is not a normal select attribute.

Hmm, you're right. I think here is something helpful:

http://rubydoc.info/docs/rails/2.3.8/ActionView/Helpers/FormOptionsHelper

http://rubydoc.info/ is imho the best ruby and rails docs on the net. Maybe it helps you next time you search something.

Max.

6

This particular point is not well documented.

The best thing to do is to read the source and experiment: https://github.com/rails/rails/blob/52fddcc653458456f98b3683dffd781cf00b35fe/actionview/lib/action_view/helpers/tag_helper.rb

I conclude that:

  • boolean attributes must receive true or false and work as expected
  • the only keys that treat hashes magically are are data and aria, others just return inspect on the Hash which is not what we want
  • Array values are space joined
  • anything else just generates a a=“b” attribute after string conversions

Then as you noticed, helpers may add more keys which are treated specially. Those are well documented on a per-helper basis.