Working With Rails

Hello New User,

try this very goog tutorial about beginning rails.

http://articles.sitepoint.com/article/learn-ruby-on-rails

Axel

thanks for the link I actually already went through that tutorial and many others. Again, most tutorials explain how to pass data to the Controller if you used rails to build the form. I used plain html to build the form and would like to know how the data input in the form can be passed to the rails controller.
Thanks

The data is passed with the HTTP POST, the controller receives a hash on the params variable. For example on your form, you access the data on the controller through the params[:name] and the params[:email].

You can do this:

def create
@model = Model.new(:name => params[:name], :email => params[:email])
@model.save
end

When you use the rails built in method to generate the form, if you look the html source code you will see:

When the form is submitted, the params hash will be:

params = {
:model => {
:name => ‘some value’,
:email => ‘another value’
}
}

Then, you can DRY up your controller

def create
@model = Model.new(params[:model])
@model.save
end

Because the params[:model] will return the the hash and pass it direct to the constructor of your model, populating your data.

I think it’s explain the Rails magic =)

You need some knowledge about Form Helpers. A good start point are the Rails Guides

http://guides.rubyonrails.org/form_helpers.html

Your going to likely run into this error http://stackoverflow.com/questions/435373/session-problem-in-rails-2-2-actioncontrollerinvalidauthenticitytoken-in-user, if you don’t use the form helpers or at least know what form fields the controller requires to be present in order for you to accomplish this.

rails docs may help you…
http://rails.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionView/Helpers/FormHelper.html

http://dizzy.co.uk/ruby_on_rails/cheatsheets/form-helpers