form_assistant plugin updates

I use your plugin regularly and love it for its utility.

I sometimes come to a situation where the whole form is using assitant_form but I would like some fields NOT to be. This happens when I need more control.

I am having difficulty achieving this. I have tried this for fields that should not use assistant_form:
- f.fields_for :web_page, @web_page, :builder => ActionView::Base.default_form_builder do |ff|
…

or :builder => nil

But neither works and I’ stumped. Can you offer any advice on this?

Quick q:

Can I add a spinner? I’m using form_assistant to upload large files. Currently, I don’t have anything to show the user that the request is still in process.

Thanks!

Thanks for the response. I’ll dig into this later today and let you know how it goes.

Nik -

I’m sorry about that, this post is rather out-of-date. Those two methods (form.submission() and form.cancel()) no longer exist. The reason is because those “helpers” aren’t really what the form_assistant is about. Its main concern is creating form fields, and I got a little carried away building features that were out of scope. So I yanked them out (actually, Chris did). You can find accurate documentation from the README.

However, that doesn’t help you solve your problem. If you’re really ambitious, you can checkout the commit that removed all of that stuff and add it back in. But specifically, here’s an example for how you might just add in the cancel() helper:

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def cancel(*args)         
  options = args.extract_options!
  text = options.delete(:text) || (args.first if args.first.is_a?(String)) || 'Cancel'
  path = options.delete(:path) || @template.request.referrer || @template.send("#{@object_name.to_s.pluralize}_path")         
  attrs = { :class => 'cancel' }.merge!(options.delete(:attrs) || {})

  content_tag(:span, @template.link_to(text, path, options), attrs)
end

If you stick that in the public section of form_assistant.rb, it should be available in your form-assisted forms. But if you get into adding a bunch of helpers, you should probably stick them in a separate module and include it in (like I did before). That’s a bit cleaner, and then if/when you realize those don’t belong in the plugin, it’s easy to pull out :-)

Let me know if you have any other questions. Hope that helps.

I do understand your desire for that. I do something similar on all of my forms. Here’s what I currently do (in application_helper.rb):

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def submission(options = {}, &block)
  concat content_tag(:p, capture(&block), { :class => 'submission' }.merge!(options))
end

That allows me to do things like:

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<% submission do %>
  <%= form.submit "Save Changes" %> or <%= form.cancel %>
<% end %>

Or if you wanted to pass options to the submission wrapper, something like:

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<% submission :class => 'form-input submit' do %>
  <%= form.submit "Save Changes" %> or <%= form.cancel %>
<% end %>

Just an option.

In your example, though, you’re wanting the form.submit to be a native feature if the form assistant plugin. The way the form_assistant works is it overrides all of Rails’ form helpers and redefines them to use the templates. So if you want the submit to be a part of that list, it’s pretty simple. Just add it to the list of form helpers, like so (look for ‘submit’ at the end of the line):

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FORM_HELPERS = [
  ActionView::Helpers::FormBuilder.field_helpers + 
  %w(date_select datetime_select time_select collection_select select country_select time_zone_select submit) - 
  %w(hidden_field label fields_for)
].flatten.freeze

And then in your app/views/forms/ directory, just add a _submit.html.erb template and the field will automatically use that template any time you’re calling form.submit. And in there, you can then wrap your submit in any div you want, along with a cancel link. Look at the other form templates to see all of the things that are made available – you’ll mostly be concerned with the element variable, though (that’s the actual HTML item).

Just to be clear, your _submit.html.erb template might look like this:

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<div class="form-input submit">
  <%= element %> or <span class="cancel"><%= link_to 'Cancel', request.referrer %></span>
</div>

Hopefully that makes sense. Let me know if you run into trouble. I had the submit helper in the list of fields at some point, but I took it out. I’m having a hard time remembering why, though :-)