RoR: Custom update for record

Question

questions
---------
id
topic_id
created_by
created_at
question_text
closed_by
closed_at
response_text

It appears in a nested table under the topics table.

I can easily create a question, I just have to exclude :created_by, created_at, closed_by, closed_at, response_text from config.create.columns. (created_at and created_by is filled with before_create_save(). So the only field the user actually fills is question_text.

The next step would be to create a "Respond" action (instead of "Edit") which would be very similar to an :update with a few differences. The form of this action would exclude all fields, except response_text. The before_respond_save() would do the filling of closed_by and closed_at.

Is there any way of doing this without creating custom views (.erb, .rhtml) with hand?

(In short: Is there any way to escape from "CRUD" a little-bit, but not doing everything by hand?)

EDIT: Example for exclude

active_scaffold do |config|
  # ...
  config.create.columns.exclude [:created_by, :created_at, :closed_by, :closed_at, :response_text]
  # ...
end

Answer 1

I gave up on solving the problem this way. As I believe the current environment does not support my approach. Instead, I went on with writing forms. See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3583582/ror-how-to-handle-custom-nested-forms-submit