Must I always use a form in a tabular interface in Rails?

Question

I have a list of users that have requested access to my application.

They appear in a table inside a view:

<table>
    <thead>
        <th>Company</th>
        <th>First Name</th>
        <th>Last Name</th>
        <th>Email</th>
        <th>Role</th>
        <th>Action</th>
    </thead>
    <% for ar in @brand.access_requests %>
        <% user = ar.user %>
        <tr id="user_<%= user.id %>">
            <td><%= user.company %></td>
            <td><%= user.first_name %></td>
            <td><%= user.last_name %></td>
            <td><%= user.email %></td>
            <td><%= collection_select :role, :id, Role.all, :id, :name %></td>
            <td><%= link_to "Create", brand_responsibilities_path(@brand), { :remote => true, :method => :post } %></td>
        </tr>
    <% end %>
</table>

So I want to assign a Role to each user, then approve that user.

Obviously this does not work, because I do not know how to refer to the "role_id" field from my link_to.

How do I include a value from another field in my link_to? Is there a way to do a ":with" or something like that? I want to pass whatever is chosen in the select box to:

brand_responsibilities_path(@brand)

I know it would work if I created a form for every single row, but is that overkill, or the Rails Way? Any help is seriously appreciated.

Answer 1

Hi, I would definitely use the form. The only way that occurs to me to do this using a link is with javascript. Apparently when you do link_to :method => :post, Rails creates a form with javascript!. So I think it's definitely cleaner to use the form:

<% form_for user do |f| %>
  <%= f.collection_select :role_id, Role.all, :id, :name %>
<% end %>