A Rails plugin to conveniently manage multiple nested models in a single form. It does so in an unobtrusive way through jQuery.
This is in early development, so some of this documentation is not yet applicable.
This is currently only available as a plugin.
script/plugin install git://github.com/ryanb/nested_form.git
When installing this plugin it will add a file at public/javascripts/nested_form.js which should be included after jQuery.
<%= javascript_include_tag 'jquery', 'nested_form' %>
You can then generate a nested form using the nested_form_for helper method.
<% nested_form_for @project do |f| %>
Use this form just like normal, including the fields_for helper method for nesting models. The benefit of this plugin comes from the link_to_add and link_to_remove helper methods on the form builder.
<% f.fields_for :tasks do |task_form| %> <%= task_form.text_field :name %> <%= task_form.link_to_remove "Remove this task" %> <% end %> <%= f.link_to_add "Add a task", :tasks %>
This generates links which dynamically add and remove fields.
It is often desirable to move the nested fields into a partial to keep things organized. If you don’t supply a block to fields_for it will look for a partial and use that.
<%= f.fields_for :tasks %>
In this case it will look for a partial called “task_fields” and pass the form builder as an f variable to it.
Wrapping tag
Default operation is to wrap field in div tag. Alternate tags can be specified, by adding the tag argument to the fields_for and link_to_add.
<% f.fields_for :tasks, :tag => 'li' do |task_form| %> <%= task_form.text_field :name %> <%= task_form.link_to_remove "Remove this task" %> <% end %> <%= f.link_to_add "Add a task", :tasks, :tag => 'li' %>
This plugin is based on the solution by Tim Riley in his complex-form-examples fork.
github.com/timriley/complex-form-examples/tree/unobtrusive-jquery-deep-fix2