Update owner tags via form

Question

I would like to uniquely use owner tags in my app. My problem is that when I create / update a post via a form I only have f.text_field :tag_list which only upd

Answer 1

When working with ownership the taggable model gets its tags a little different. Without ownership it can get its tags like so:

@photo.tag_list << 'a tag' # adds a tag to the existing list
@photo.tag_list = 'a tag' # sets 'a tag' to be the tag of the @post

However, both of these opperations create taggins, whose tagger_id and tagger_type are nil.

In order to have these fields set, you have to use this method:

@user.tag(@photo, on: :tags, with: 'a tag')

Suppose you add this line to the create/update actions of your PhotosController:

@user.tag(@photo, on: :tags, with: params[:photo][:tag_list])

This will create two taggings (one with and one without tagger_id/_type), because params[:photo][:tag_list] is already included in photo_params. So in order to avoid that, just do not whitelist :tag_list.

For Rails 3 - remove :tag_list from attr_accessible.

For Rails 4 - remove :tag_list from params.require(:photo).permit(:tag_list).

At the end your create action might look like this:

def create
  @photo = Photo.new(photo_params) # at this point @photo will not have any tags, because :tag_list is not whitelisted
  current_user.tag(@photo, on: :tags, with: params[:photo][:tag_list])

  if @photo.save
    redirect_to @photo
  else
    render :new
  end
end

Also note that when tagging objects this way you cannot use the usual tag_list method to retrieve the tags of a photo, because it searches for taggings, where tagger_id IS NULL. You have to use instead

@photo.tags_from(@user)

In case your taggable object belongs_to a single user you can also user all_tags_list.