Rails form_with

Warm Up

Let’s pick up where we left off having just finished Advanced Routing. For this lesson, use the advanced-routing-complete branch of our Set List Tutorial repo here.

• Thinking about our Set List application, what is the structure of the forms we use to create and update artists? (Share your screen and put them side by side)
  • How do we tell our forms the path and verb it should use when the form is submitted?
  • What connection exists between the form and the objects we are creating or updating?

form_with

form_with is a Rails form helper, similar to form_tag and form_for which have both been soft deprecated. It is a form helper that allows us to use ruby code to build an HTML form. form_with can bind a form to a model object or it can create a simple form that does not require a model. It uses a number of helper options to make some educated guesses about how the HTML form should be built.

If we were going to use form_with without a model to create a simple search form, then we could do it like so:

<%= form_with url: "/search", method: :get, data: {turbo: false} do |form| %>
  <%= form.label "Search for:"  %>
  <%= form.text_field :q %>
  <%= form.submit "Search" %>
<% end %>

The resulting HTML:

<form accept-charset="UTF-8" action="/search" data-remote="true" method="get">
  <label for="q">Search for:</label>
  <input id="q" name="q" type="text" />
  <input name="commit" type="submit" value="Search" data-disable-with="Search" />
</form>

For every form input, an ID attribute is generated from its name (“q” in the above example). These IDs can be very useful for CSS styling or manipulation of form controls with JavaScript.

If we were going to use form_with to create a Dog object with name, breed, and age attributes, our form would look something like this:

<!-- app/views/dogs/new.html.erb -->
<%= form_with model: Dog.new, data: {turbo: false} do |f| %>
  <%= f.label :name %>
  <%= f.text_field :name %>

  <%= f.label :breed %>
  <%= f.text_field :breed %>

  <%= f.label :age %>
  <%= f.number_field :age %>

  <%= f.submit %>
<% end %>

Notice the data: {turbo: false} option. You must include this option for your form to work properly with the form_with helper!

As of Rails 7, Rails uses Turbo as a form optimization tool. Turbo has many benefits, but it also introduces some quirks that are tricky to troubleshoot, especially when you’re just starting to learn about forms. For simplicity, we are going to disable Turbo whenever making a form in order to avoid these pesky issues.

In the above example, we are binding our form to a new Dog object Dog.new. While this works from a functionality standpoint, we don’t ever want to be reaching from our views into our database, so, we would want our controller to send this object to our views:

# app/controllers/dogs_controller.rb

class DogsController
  def new
    @dog = Dog.new
  end
end

<!-- app/views/dogs/new.html.erb -->
<%= form_with model: @dog, class: "doggos_form", data: {turbo: false} do |f| %>
  <%= f.label :name %>
  <%= f.text_field :name %>

  <%= f.label :breed %>
  <%= f.text_field :breed %>

  <%= f.label :age %>
  <%= f.number_field :age %>

  <%= f.submit %>
<% end %>

form_with figures out where the browser should submit the form, and which HTTP verb to use, based on the object we pass:

• if the object does not have an id:
  • form_with will use a POST verb and the action path will be /resources
  • the form will start out empty
  • the submit button will say ‘Create (resource name)’
  • the action method we need to process the form data will be called create
• if the object has an id:
  • form_with will use a PUT verb and the action path will be something like /resources/:id
  • the form will pre-populate the fields with the data from the database
  • the submit button will say ‘Update (resource name)’
  • the action method we need to to process the form data will be called update

From the docs:

• @dog is the actual object being edited or created
• There is a single hash of options. HTML options (except id and class) are passed in the :html hash
• The form_with method yields a form builder object (the f variable)
• If you wish to direct your form request to a particular URL, you would use form_with url: my_nifty_url_path instead. To see more in depth options on what form_with accepts be sure to check out the API documentation.
• Methods to create form controls are called on the form builder object f.
• form_with can be used to create forms that are not tied to a model
• We need to pass the option local: true in order to avoid our form being submitted using AJAX

Strong Params with form_with

Another difference between form_with url and form_with model is how the params gets built when the form is submitted and handled through Rails. When using url, all of the fields are inserted directly into the params hash - the params looks like an un-nested hash; in this format, we use params.permit(:attribute1, :attribute2) in our strong params method.

With form_with model, the form fields are inserted into the params in a nested hash - the key is the name of the resource, and it points to a collection of key/value pairs representing the field labels and user inputs. With this nested hash, our strong params will need some additional instructions:

def dog_params
  params.require(:dog).permit(:name, :breed, :age)
end

If we aren’t using strong params, then we can access our form data by calling:

params[:dog][:name]

from the controller action that the form submits to.

Again, notice the nesting.

Practice

In our Set List app:

1. Update the Artist Edit form to use form_with model instead of form_with url.
2. Using TDD, create a New Song form using form_with model.

In your project, update a few forms to use the form with model instead of form_with url - see if you can keep using partials!

Extra Practice:

1. Using TDD, create a Edit Song form using form_with model.
2. Using TDD, create a New Playlist form using form_with model.

Checks for Understanding

• How does form_with model know which verb/path combination to submit to?
• What is a benefit of using form_with model over form_with url or form_tag? Are there any drawbacks?

Completed code for this lesson is available in the Set List Tutorial’s form-with-complete branch here.