"Not Selected"-dropdown-list-option

rubyonrails-talk
1

Hi all

I'm quite new to Rails an am managing an application, and I want to add a "Not Selected" option to a dropdown-list.

As it stands now, once you've chosen an option in the dropdownlist the value is stored in the database, and then it's impossible to remove the option unless you choose another option (Radiobutton-style). If no option is selected, null is stored as that dropdown-lists value.

Therefor I need an "Not Selected"-option, that when selected would save the value null in the database.

There must've been plenty of cases where something similar to this has been implemented before, yet I have failed to find any resources despite searching for a good couple of hours.

This is how the form looks right now:

<%= account_pref.input "editorial_#{key}".to_sym, :as => :radio, :collection => options_for(Editorial, key.to_sym), :wrapper_html => { :class => "compact" }, :label => key.titleize %>

What I was thinking was that maybe there's some method similar to the option_for one , so that I could add a "Not Stated" option to the collection, and then somehow link its value to null.

If anyone can either give me some direct tips for solutions, or a place to find a good resource on this, I'd be very happy.

Regards, Emil

2

I am having a similar issue.

I figured out to add a blank item to the top of the list. But then when I go back in to edit mode, it gets upset because it doesn't exist in the collection.

3

Have a look at the :prompt option for the select and collection_select methods. Using that to create your "Not selected" option would be trivial.

Walter