Working With Rails

STI saved me from a problem but created another one. Lets say I have this entirely contrived model…

class Beast : ActiveRecord::Base
end

class SeaBeast < Beast
end

class LandBeast < Beast

validates_presence_of :number_of_legs
end

Since my form only differs by the one field number_of_legs, I created one form to keep things DRY. What I did not expect was that the object class name gets used as the params[] name and the field names.

In the case of LandBeast the fields start out as land_beast_ and the object posted back is params[:land_beast].

Like wise for SeaBeast: sea_beast_ and params[:sea_beast].
If I use the parent object then it is beast_ and params[:beast].

THE QUESTION

Can this name be overridden? By the way I am using a form_for, not form_tag.

Further side complication.

One of the gems I am using for date time selection uses the parent class name, so no matter what gets passed to it, it uses beast_ and params[:beast]. So every post I am getting two different hashes that I now have to combine so I can do one save or update_attributes.