Help with create action in a different show page

Question

Hi, I'm a Rails newbie and want to do something but keep messing something up. I'd love some help.

I have a simple app that has three tables. Users, Robots, and Recipients. Robots belong_to users and Recipients belong_to robots.

On the robot show page, I want to be able to create recipients for that robot right within the robot show page.

I have the following code in the robot show page which lists current recipients:

<table>

<% @robot.recipients.each do |recipient| %>
  <tr>
    <td><b><%=h recipient.chat_screen_name %></b> via <%=h recipient.protocol_name</td>

    <td><%= link_to 'Edit', edit_recipient_path(recipient) %>&nbsp;</td>
    <td><%= link_to 'Delete', recipient, :confirm => 'Are you sure?', :method => :delete %></td>
  </tr>
<% end %>
</table>

What I'd like to do is have an empty field in which the user can add a new recipient, and have tried the following:

I added this to the Robots Show view:

<% form_for(@robot.recipient) do |f| %>
Enter the screen name<br>
<%= f.text_field :chat_screen_name %>
<p>
  <%= f.submit 'Update' %>
</p>
<% end %>

and then this to the Robot controller in the show action:

@recipient = Recipient.new
  @recipients = Recipient.all

Alas, I'm still getting a NoMethod error that says: "undefined method `recipient' for #"

I'm not sure what I'm missing. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

Answer 1

Rather than calling @robot.recipient in the form, you probably want @recipient.

Answer 2

Use @recipient, like @ealdent says.

Your update action should be somewhat similar to this:

def update
  @robot = Robot.find(params[:id])
  @robot.recipients.build(params[:recipient])
  ...
end

This will create the recipient in the collection for the given robot.

But there are much better ways to do this, where you can add an unlimited number of recipients, as explained here

Hope this gets you started.