Ruby noob using array for databse lookups

rubyonrails-talk
1

I have this model...

class Meeting < ActiveRecord::Base   MEETING_TYPES = [['General' , 'g'],                   ['Special' , 's'],                   ['AGM' , 'a']] end

I have generated scaffolding and the edit and create are working as expected. However in the list it is not displaying the correct meeting type, it is displaying the value stored in the database (g,s,a) where I want "General", "Special" or "AGM". This is from my list.rhtml file...

<% for meeting in @meetings %>   <%=h meeting.send(:meeting_type) %> <% end %>

I can see why it is displaying the database values but I'm not sure how to retrieve the display values from the array or if there is some rails helper/magic I should be using.

I tried using a hash which solved this problem but broke the create/ edit combobox.

2

I have this model...

class Meeting < ActiveRecord::Base   MEETING_TYPES = [['General' , 'g'],                   ['Special' , 's'],                   ['AGM' , 'a']] end

Why not override the meeting_type method?

def meeting_type   type = read_attribute('meeting_type')   tuple = MEETING_TYPES.detect {|t| t[1] == type}   tuple[0] unless tuple.nil? end

Note that meeting_type= (the "setter") is left alone so that it can still conveniently receive form values, where the database value would be used.

<% for meeting in @meetings %>   <%=h meeting.send(:meeting_type) %> <% end %>

You're overusing send(). Once you've overridden meeting_type as shown above, you can just do this:

  <% for meeting in @meetings %>     <%=h meeting.:meeting_type %>   <% end %>

Ciao, Sheldon.

3

Much appreciated Sheldon.

I guess the colon is a typo. - meeting.:meeting_type

I used send because I am learning from the scaffold generator. It does read a lot clearer calling the method directly.

When should the send() method be used?

Cheers, Reed.

4

There are two situations in which send() makes sense:

1) When you write the code, you don't know what method to call. It's a runtime decision based on the contents of one or more variables.

2) You want to violate the method's privacy, because you understand the risks and reckon it's worth it in this particular situation.

Ciao, Sheldon.

5

Overriding the meeting_type caused a problem for the combobox - it wasn't providing the correct value to the database so I named the method meeting_type_display and it works well.

Thanks for you help,

Reed

6

Here is what I did in the end...

  def meeting_type_display     tuple = MEETING_TYPES.rassoc read_attribute('meeting_type')     tuple[0] if tuple   end