Categorizations for Ruby on Rails (or tags)

Question

Hello, I have Articles, Profiles, and Comments. What would be the best way to categorize new instances of each of these? When a user creates a new article, profile, or comment, he must select a category for them. I want to have a drop down menu from which he can select the categories. The categories are different for each Model, and what categories appear in one model cannot appear in another. Thank you.

Answer 1

As for categories or 'tags', I recommend this gem,

http://github.com/TylerRick/acts_as_taggable .

Seems to be a reasonable fit for you.

For the drop down menu, I would follow this blog here:

http://www.softiesonrails.com/2008/4/10/absolute-moron-s-guide-to-forms-in-rails-part-5

That's what got me started in making complex drop downs made out of dynamic models. That section, Part 5 speaks specifically about what you're asking, but you may have to backtrack to part 1 ( I recommend it ), to see how he built up to it.

Good luck!