Rails Recipes #31 Authenticating Users

I have figured out everything except for how to add a new user to the database. The book gives an example of adding a user through the command line, and that works fine. I can login using a user created that way. I cannot, however, figure out how to add a new user from a form. The problem seems to occur when trying to except a user submitted password (of which there is no corresponding DB listing) and generating a salt and hash to be stored in the DB. The method in the user model:

def password=(pass)     salt = [Array.new(6){rand(256).chr}.join].pack("m").chomp     self.password_salt, self.password_hash = salt, Digest::SHA256.hexdigest(pass + salt)   end

how do I accept a password from a view from a form, generate the password and salt and save it to the DB. Here is what I have for the view form

View:

<%= form_tag({:action => 'new_user'}, :multipart => true) %>

<div class="new_i">                   <p><b>Username:</b><br>                     <%= text_field("user", "username", "size" => 20 ) %> </p> </div>

<div class="new_i">                   <p><b>Password:</b><br>                     <%= text_field_tag("password",nil, "size" => 20 ) %> </p> </div>

<%= submit_tag(" Register ")%> <%= end_form_tag %>

I changed the text_field to text_field_tag because the fact that password is not a line in the DB was raising an error. I can't figure out how to handle this in the controller in :action => "new_user"