How to have a drop down <select> field in a rails form?

Question

I am creating a scaffold -

rails g scaffold Contact email:string email_provider:string 

but I want the email provider to be a drop down (wi

Answer 1

In your model,

class Contact
  self.email_providers = %w[Gmail Yahoo MSN]
  validates :email_provider, :inclusion => email_providers
end

In your form,

<%= f.select :email_provider, 
    options_for_select(Contact.email_providers, @contact.email_provider) %>

the second arg of the options_for_select will have any current email_provider selected.