Collection_check_box usage in RoR - ruby-on-rails

Question

I'm a relative novice to rails. I have a process that runs and finishes with a status (five possible different statuses). The process is run per-building. (We collect data from buildings.) I'm trying to allow users to configure themselves to receive notification email with fine-grained control: Per-building and complettion status. I'm trying to use collection_check_boxes to create a table of checkboxes for the user to select, but I'm not even sure collection_check_boxes was designed for such a case. I would be very happy to hear a yes or no on that question to start with.
I have the following modles:
class Building < ActiveRecord::Base
self.primary_key = 'building_id'
has_many :etl_status
has_many :email_notifications
end
class BuildingUserPair < ActiveRecord::Base
self.primary_key = "building_user_pairs_id"
belongs_to :building
belongs_to :user
has_many :email_notification_settings
end
class EmailNotificationSetting < ActiveRecord::Base
self.primary_key = "email_notification_settings_id"
belongs_to :building_user_pair
end
class EtlResult < ActiveRecord::Base
self.primary_key = 'etl_results_id'
# table has 5 rows, with values 1 -5 with the statuses "HUNKY DORY", "MO BETTA", "LIMPING ALONG", "DISMAIL FAILURE" and "UNEXPECTEDLY IDLE"
end
class EtlResultNotification < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :building
belongs_to :user
end
class EtlStatus < ActiveRecord::Base
self.primary_key = 'etl_status_id'
belongs_to :building
has_many :users, :through => :email_notifications
end
class UsersController < ApplicationController
def show
#user = User.find(params[:id])
#buildings = Building.active
#bup = []
#email_notifications_settings = []
#buildings.each do |bldg|
bup = BuildingUserPair.where(user_id: params[:id], building_id: bldg.building_id).first_or_create
#email_notifications_settings[bldg.building_id] =
EmailNotificationSetting.where(building_user_pairs_id: bup.building_user_pairs_id).all
end
end
my users/show.html.erb contains this:
<%= form_for #user do |f| %>
<% #buildings.each do |bldg| %>
<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-4">
<%= bldg.name %>
</div>
<%= f.fields_for :email_notification_settings do |ens| %>
<%= ens.collection_check_boxes( #email_notifications_settings[bldg.building_id],
EtlResult.all, :etl_result_id, :result_name) %>
</div>
<% end %>
<% end %>
<div class="form-buttons">
<%= submit_tag("Update", data: { buildings: #buildings}) %>
</div>
The etl_result_notification table has just two columns, besides
it's primary key, a building-user-pair column and then a number,
1-5 that is a foreign key to the Etl Results table. Thus the idea is that a new line gets
created for a checkbox, and if a checkbox is newly unchecked, the row in the table is deleted.
Like I said, not even sure if form_for and collection_check_boxes was even designed to do this.
My problem is that the checkboxes are not being properly initialized. They all come up unchecked.
I'm guessing I need to pass other paraemters to collection_check_boxes, but I can't think
what they should be.
TIA

Answer 1

I think that you are over complicating your question,
what you want to do is save a list of id that march to the lest of emails the user want to get.
Rubyist posted https://stackoverflow.com/a/23340368/1380867 witch is a good example of what you want to do.
you should create a serialize :email_notification_ids
#MODEL
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
serialize :email_notification_ids
end
Hope this helps
Happy Codding