Rails Form Object with Virtus: has_many association

Question

I am having a tough time figuring out how to make a form_object that creates multiple associated objects for a has_many association with the virtus gem.

Answer 1

The problem is that the format of the JSON being passed to UserForm.new() is not what is expected.

The JSON that you are passing to it, in the user_form_params variable, currently has this format:

{  
   "name":"testform",
   "emails":{  
      "0":{  
         "email_text":"email1@test.com"
      },
      "1":{  
         "email_text":"email2@test.com"
      },
      "2":{  
         "email_text":"email3@test.com"
      }
   }
}

UserForm.new() is actually expecting the data in this format:

{  
   "name":"testform",
   "emails":[   
       {"email_text":"email1@test.com"}, 
       {"email_text":"email2@test.com"},  
       {"email_text":"email3@test.com"}
   }
}

You need to change the format of the JSON, before passing it to UserForm.new(). If you change your create method to the following, you won't see that error anymore.

  def create
    emails = []
    user_form_params[:emails].each_with_index do |email, i| 
      emails.push({"email_text": email[1][:email_text]})
    end

    @user_form = UserForm.new(name: user_form_params[:name], emails: emails)

    if @user_form.save
      redirect_to @user, notice: 'User was successfully created.' 
    else
      render :new 
    end
  end