Rails FormTagHelper missing important select and collection_select methods

Question

You can do this when you use form_for(@model...):

collection_select(:subscription, :duration, ["Some", "Values"], :to_s, :to_s, {:prompt => true})

And the output is something like this:

<select id="subscription_duration" name="subscription[duration]">
    <option value="">Please select</option>
    <option value="Some">Some</option>
    <option value="Values">Values</option>
</select>

If you use a form without a model, you don't have that nice helper method to create the <option> tags for you. Instead, you have to do this:

select_tag("subscription", '<option value="Some">Some</option><option value="Values">Values</option>')

FormHelper and FormOptionsHelper work together on a form wrapping a model, and they have the select and collection_select to make life easy. For a plain form_tag (without a model), however, there is no such FormOptionsTagHelper. FormTagHelper has a select_tag method, but you have to manually write out the options which is a waste. It seems like this has been fixed somewhere.

I could write my own helper to get rid of writing those option tags manually, but thats what FormOptionsHelper#collection_select does... Is there an equivalent out there for forms without models?

Answer 1

select and collection_select can be called without a model. I usually use a combination of two significant words, and an array of pairs [label, value] to select. The only drawback is having to use the format abc[xyz].

You tried to use options_for_select?

select_tag 'Account', options_for_select({ "Basic" => "$20", "Plus" => "$40" }, "$40")