Rails creating multiple records in nested form

Question

I've been at this for hours now but can't find a solution and am now wondering if I'm approaching this correctly.

I have an employee form and in it I'm creating multiple ee_pay records (which store a reference to the company_pay type they are). The problem is accessing the company_pay associated with the ee_pay that I'm creating in the form.

The code below works but I keep getting the description of the second @taxable_pays type in the variable @description in _pay_types.html.erb

I'm not entirely sure why this is happening. I've tried multiple ways of passing the description of each one. I know there's two in that collection because the correct ids are getting stored in two separate ee_pay records that get saved when I submit the form.

Can anyone tell me how I can pass the value of each @taxable_pays.description to the view? And also tell me if I'm approaching this in the best way?

Thanks for looking. Here's my code:

employees_controller.rb

I have a before_action that does the following:

@taxable_pays = CompanyPay.where(company_id: current_company.id).order(:id)

Then:

  def new
    @taxable_pays.each do |pt|
    pay_type = @employee.ee_pay.build(company_pay_id: pt.id)
    @description = pt.description
  end

_form.html.erb

      <div class="row">
          <div class="col-md-4">  
            <div class="form_label"><strong>Description</strong></div>           
          </div> 
          <div class="col-md-4">  
            <div class="form_label"><strong>Amount</strong></div>           
          </div> 
          <div class="col-md-4">  
            <div class="form_label"><strong>Rate</strong></div>           
          </div> 

            <%= f.fields_for :ee_pay do |builder| %>
              <%= render "pay_types", :f => builder %>              
            <% end %>                 

      </div>

_pay_types.html.erb

  <div class="col-md-4">
    <div class="form_indent1"><div class="form_indent1"><%= @description %></div></div>
    <div class="form_spacer"></div>
  </div> 
  <div class="col-md-4">
    <div class="form_indent1"><%= f.text_field :amount, class: "number_input" %></div>
    <div class="form_spacer"></div>
  </div>  
  <div class="col-md-4">  
    <div class="form_indent1"><%= f.text_field :rate, class: "number_input" %></div>
    <div class="form_spacer"></div><br />
  </div>

Edit 1 (updated)

After advice from Mark G. below my code now looks like:-

employees_controller.rb

  @pay_types = []
  @taxable_pays.each do |pt|
    @pay_types << @employee.ee_pay.build(company_pay_id: pt.id)
    puts "Debug for the pay_types"
    puts @pay_types
  end

_form.html.erb

    <div>
      <% @pay_types.each do |ee_pay| %>
        <%= f.fields_for :ee_pay do |builder| %>
          <%= render "pay_types", :f => builder, :ee_pay => ee_pay %>              
        <% end %>                 
      <% end %> 
    </div>

_pay_types.html.erb

    <%= f.hidden_field :company_pay_id %>  (not on original edit)

    <div class="col-md-3">
      <div class="form_indent1"><div class="form_indent1"><%= ee_pay.company_pay.description %></div></div>
      <div class="form_spacer"></div>
    </div> 
    <div class="col-md-3">
      <div class="form_indent1"><%= f.text_field :amount, class: "number_input" %></div>
      <div class="form_spacer"></div>
    </div>  
    <div class="col-md-2">
      <div class="form_indent1"><%= ee_pay.company_pay.units %></div>
      <div class="form_spacer"></div>
    </div>  
    <div class="col-md-4">  
      <div class="form_indent1"><%= f.text_field :rate, class: "number_input" %></div>
      <div class="form_spacer"></div><br />
    </div>

I originally thought this was each of the @pay_types printing twice but looking at it again it's the description printing twice, each time with each of the company_pay_ids

*description*        *company_pay_id*    
Basic                   2
Basic                   8
Time & 1/2              2
Time & 1/2              8

I'm really stumped with this.

Edit 2

This is the console output I'm getting when I try create a new employee

        CompanyPay Load (0.7ms)  SELECT  "company_pays".* FROM "company_pays"  WHERE "company_pays"."id" = $1 LIMIT 1  [["id", 2]]
          Rendered employees/_pay_types.html.erb (2.8ms)
        Debug in the _form view fields_for
        #<EePay:0x007f4130a214a8>
          Rendered employees/_pay_types.html.erb (0.5ms)
        Debug in the _form view fields_for
        #<EePay:0x007f4130a214a8>
          CompanyPay Load (0.8ms)  SELECT  "company_pays".* FROM "company_pays"  WHERE "company_pays"."id" = $1 LIMIT 1  [["id", 8]]
          Rendered employees/_pay_types.html.erb (2.4ms)
        Debug in the _form view fields_for
        #<EePay:0x007f4130a1fcc0>
          Rendered employees/_pay_types.html.erb (0.7ms)
        Debug in the _form view fields_for
        #<EePay:0x007f4130a1fcc0>
          Rendered employees/_form.html.erb (37.5ms)
          Rendered employees/new.html.erb within layouts/application (38.3ms)

I'm giving up for the night. Been looking at it for too long and getting nowhere. Thanks for the help. Will try again tomorrow

What's the contents of the @pay_types collection? Is that length 2 or 4? Your code looks syntactically correct, so I would start checking your variable values and see whats causing the extra iterations. You can use logger.info in your controller to do some primitive debugging. — Mark G.
– Mark G., Commented Feb 8, 2015 at 23:04
I've debugged @pay_types and in the terminal it's showing that there's 2 objects with different references #<EePay:0x007f41307346c8> #<EePay:0x007f4130732828>. I'm banging my head off the wall here. Just can't see the reason for rendering twice for each object in @pay_types. Would showing you the generated html be any use? — Al D
– Al D, Commented Feb 8, 2015 at 23:14
If you remove the fields_for tag and just try rendering the partial without the form fields, do you still get duplicates? If that still happens, try naming the partial something else and see if it still occurs? — Mark G.
– Mark G., Commented Feb 8, 2015 at 23:41
Tried that - replaced all the content in _pay_types.html.erb with random text and removed the fields_for from _form.html.erb. The partial only rendered twice which is correct — Al D
– Al D, Commented Feb 8, 2015 at 23:57

Mark G. · Accepted Answer · 2015-02-08 02:36:23Z

1

In the example code you gave above, @description is an instance variable on your controller. It looks like you're iterating over all your @taxable_pays objects and assigning @description within that loop, so the value of @description is always going to be whatever the last taxable pay's description is.

Conceptually, it looks like you're trying to do the right thing, but I think you might be making it more complicated than it needs to be. It looks like ee_pay is associated to CompanyPay right? Why not in your _pay_types.html.erb file, just go through the association that you've established?

<div class="form_indent1"><%= ee_pay.company_pay.description %></div>

Since you don't have the ee_pay variable available to your partial, you'll need to pass that to your partial in _form.html.erb. Also, how are you generating multiple sets of form fields without looping over the ee_pay collection? I would picture it working something like (naming seems a bit confusing, but just going with what you had):

controller

def new
  @pay_types = []
  @taxable_pays.each do |pt|
    @pay_types << @employee.ee_pay.build(company_pay_id: pt.id)
  end
end

_form.html.erb

<% @pay_types.each do |ee_pay| %>
  <%= f.fields_for :ee_pay do |builder| %>
    <%= render "pay_types", :f => builder, :ee_pay => ee_pay %>              
  <% end %> 
<% end %>

Let me know if that doesn't work and we can tweak things until you get something that solves your particular problem.

answered Feb 8, 2015 at 2:36

Mark G.

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6 Comments

Al D Over a year ago

Yes I was generating multiple sets of form fields without looping over any collections. I was puzzled myself as to exactly how that was happening but I put it down to the code in my employees_controller where I have @taxable_pays.each do |pt| pay_type = @employee.ee_pay.build(company_pay_id: pt.id). I'm going to give your code a go now

Al D Over a year ago

Got it working with your code but it's rendering each new ee_pay twice (similar to what it was doing for me previously i.e. it magically rendered the two new ee_pay nested forms without me iterating over anything). So now I have 4 nested records. Any ideas? I'll have a mess around with it myself too. Thanks for your help. Much apprecaited

Al D Over a year ago

I'm also struggling when editing a previously created form with these multiple nested records. It's duplicating loads and creating multiple entries when I edit one of the nested records.

Mark G. Over a year ago

Is it rendering the partial 'pay_types' multiple times or is it doing the 'fields_for' multiple times?

Al D Over a year ago

I'm not entirely sure how to check that. I've been looking at it all day trying to figure out what it's doing but am getting nowhere. I'll put debug into the view code (I had some earlier but removed it) and edit my original post in a few

|

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 10:24:12Z

I went around in circles with this using Mark's method so asked another question on stackoverflow which can be found here. This might help someone else who lands here.

Basically, the code should be:-

employees_controller

@taxable_pays.each do |tp|
  @employee.ee_pay.build(company_pay_id: tp.id)
end

_form

<%= f.fields_for :ee_pay do |builder| %>
   <%= render "pay_types", :f => builder %>    
<% end %>

_pay_types

    <div class="row">
        <%= f.hidden_field :company_pay_id %> 
        <div class="col-md-2">
          <div class="form_indent1"><div class="form_indent1"><%= f.object.company_pay.description %></div></div>
          <div class="form_spacer"></div>
        </div> 
        <div class="col-md-10">         
            <div class="col-md-4">  
              <div class="form_indent1"><%= f.text_field :rate, class: "number_input" %></div>
              <div class="form_spacer"></div><br />
            </div>
            <div class="col-md-4">
              <div class="form_indent1"><%= f.text_field :amount, class: "number_input" %></div>
              <div class="form_spacer"></div>
            </div>  
        </div>  
    </div>

Notice how in the _pay_types partial, the company_pay associated with the ee_pay being built can be accessed using <%= f.object.company_pay.description %>, as long as all the associations are set up correctly. So simple.

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