getting null value in my table? - ruby-on-rails

Question

I am creating employee pay roll application. In that i am having two models one is employee and another is salary. I have added foreign key to get the employee_id in salaries table and to get the employee name in _form.html.erb(salaries) using the gem 'rails3-jquery-autocomplete'. I have followed all the steps in that gem. But foreign key relationship is not working. I am getting null value in the field employee_id in salaries table.
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Here i have attached my model,view,controller,routes and everything. Kindly check it.
My Models
** Salary.rb**
class Salary < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :employee, :foreign_key => "employee_id"
attr_accessible :basic, :da, :effective_from, :effective_to, :employeesalary, :hra, :ca, :sa, :employee_id
end
Employee.rb
class Employee < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :salaries, :foreign_key => "employee_id"
attr_accessible :address, :age, :branch, :city, :date_of_birth, :designation, :employee_end_date, :employee_start_date, :gender, :name
end
My Controllers
salaries_controller.rb
class SalariesController < ApplicationController
autocomplete :employee, :name, :display_value => :name, :full => true
def new
#salary = Salary.new
end
def create
#salary = Salary.new(params[:salary])
if #salary.save
flash[:success] = "Created a new month salary!"
redirect_to salaries_path
else
flash[:error] = "Couldn't Create salary"
render 'new'
end
end
def index
#salary = Salary.order('created_at DESC').paginate(:page => params[:page], :per_page => 10)
end
def show
#salary = Salary.find(params[:id])
#employee =Employee.all
end
end
employees_controller.rb
class EmployeesController < ApplicationController
def new
#employee = Employee.new
#salary = #employee.salaries.build
end
def create
#employee = Employee.new(params[:employee])
if #employee.save
flash[:success] = "Created Employee Successfully!"
redirect_to employee_path(#employee)
else
flash[:error] = "Couldn't Create a Employee"
render 'new'
end
end
def index
#employee = Employee.order('created_at DESC').paginate(:page => params[:page], :per_page => 10)
end
def show
#employee = Employee.find(params[:id])
end
end
routes.rb
resources :salaries do
get :autocomplete_employee_name, :on => :collection
end
resources :employees
_form.html.erb(salaries)
<%= form_for #salary do |f| %>
<%= f.hidden_field :employee_id, :id => "real_employee_id" %>
<span class="help-block">Enter the Employee name</span>
<%= autocomplete_field_tag 'throwaway_employee', '',
autocomplete_employee_name_salaries_path,
:size => 75, :id_element => '#real_employee_id' %>
application.js
//= require jquery
//= require jquery_ujs
//= require autocomplete-rails
//= require_tree .
I have checked throughly but can't find the error. Kindly help me to get out of this issue.
Thanks in advance...

Answer 1

I had a play with this code tonight and I think I know what might be happening.
When you start typing in an employee name a green list of names pops up. If you just hit enter straight away the form takes whatever you have typed so far and uses it to look up the name. This fails because the name is incomplete. As you have no validation on the employee id the form works and a null employee id is saved.
What you need to do is to use the down arrow key or mouse to select one of the names. When you do that the name will change to light green and the text in the text box will be replaced with the full name.
Then when you submit the form the match is found and everything works!
So your code works, you are just using the GUI incorrectly.
You should also add this line to your salary.rb file:
validates :employee_id, presence: true
That's my theory. Please try it out and let us know how you go.