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Rails Forum - Ruby on Rails Help and Discussion Forum » Controllers and Views » date_select helper and default values
... and i'm back with another question.
I am using the date_select helper in my form and I want to set the date when the page loads to something specific. Is there a way to do this? If not, is there a way to do this other than by manually adding the fields that I want one by one?
Thanks.
The date_select method is for editing a model's date attribute. If you want to set the initial value you would set the date for the model. For example:
def new
@my_model = MyModel.new(:my_date => Date.today) # use any date you want
end
Okay I guess I am beginning to see a theme here. I didn't know that the Model was so closely tied to forms. It makes sense since Rails seems to do a lot of magic to make things "just work" whenever a new form is created.
I am wondering about using things like select_date and select_time. Right now, I make form elements that are part of the model attribute (ie. date_select), and whenever I want to allow a user to edit the values, the fields are automatically populated with the correct values. I assume this part of the reason to use things like date_select. If I use something like select_date, would i need to do something special to populate the fields with the correct values from the database?
Second question (along the same lines). I have two fields: start_time and end_time in my form. First off, those times are in the following format: 6:00 AM, 6:30 AM, 7:00 AM etc. I generated an array with a set of values that I wanted and passed them into a form.select. The data type for the start_time and end_time fields in the database is "Time". I am of course having trouble populating the start_time and end_time in the form with the correct values when editing. I do think it has something to do with the "Time" in the database not matching up with the time format I have generated for my select form element. How might I fix this?
Thanks.
Well, I found a solution to my second problem. I'll post it here for archival purposes. I am storing two things in my database:
start_time with data type Time
end_time with data type Time
I wanted to use 2 select boxes: one for start_time and one for end_time. The time values were in a specific format within a specific range. The times were in the format '%I:%M %p' from 6:00am - 8:00pm. So I created a private method within my controller that generated an array that looked like this:
[
[6:00 AM, Time.parse('2000-01-01 6:00:00 AM')],
[6:30 AM, Time.parse('2000-01-01 6:30:00 AM')],
[7:00 AM, Time.parse('2000-01-01 7:00:00 AM')]
etc.
]
If anyone has a better way to do this, I would love to hear it.
Last edited by Ceres (2007-01-21 20:30:03)
Oh, I also found a handy plugin called FlexTimes that may help someone else attack this problem in another way. Didn't help me out much, but it might help someone else out:
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