Rails - Submit multiple forms on same page - ruby-on-rails

Question

Model:
Users have expenses. Expense has a status.
View:
As users add their expenses, they are shown in a list. Each expense row has a form button on the end, which is used to submit the expense (changing the status of the expense). This allows users to add expenses they have not completely filled out, and submit them when they are ready. There is no parent form on this page, just the form buttons which submit the expense to a method which changes the status, and then reloads the page.
Currently it works great, but users have asked to be able to "submit all" the expenses that are showing on the view with a single button.
Question:
What is the proper way to handle this in rails? Should I find a way to gather the array of expense id's and then submit a separate form? Is there a way to ask for a set of records present in a view with a certain status?
Thanks!

Answer 1

Another option, if I'm thinking about this right (big if), would be to wrap your page in a User form. Then you could have something like...
<%= form_for(#user) do |f| %>
<% #user.expenses.each do |expense| %>
<% f.fields_for expense do |e| %>
<!-- expense form -->
<% end %>
<% end >
<% end %>
This is something you could submit as a whole. I'm having trouble picturing what a single expense addition might look like, but hopefully this gets you a little further down the road.
Edit: in addition to having this User form on the page, you could have an "extra" Expense form to create an expense. When you submit a new expense, that expense appears in the list under the user form, where it can be edited or submitted, either as part of a group or individually (as part of a "group" of 1).

Answer 2

custom controller action:
def update_all_expense_statuses
expenses = current_user.expenses
ExpenseUpdater.new(expenses).update_expense
redirect_to :back
end
expense updater class:
class ExpenseUpdater
def initialize(expenses)
#expenses = expenses
end
def update_expense
#expenses.each do |expense|
expense.update_attributes(status: 'paid')
expense.save
end
end
end
This is just an example of one way to update all the user's expenses with a custom controller action. Just call the controller method from a link_to:
<%= link_to "Update all expenses", update_all_expense_statuses_path %>
Remember to add it to your routes. Hope this helps.

Answer 3

The first thing you should do is change the forms to submit remotely, ie make an ajax request. Then you're not reloading the whole page. Check out Rails' various "remote" form helpers, eg "remote_form_for".
Then, write a javascript function to submit all the forms for inputs that have changed since the page loaded. You'd probably want to add a "changed" (or similar) class to the parent form in an onchange event in each input, to facilitate this. I think this is the best way to handle the "status" thing you're asking about. Make a "Submit all" button which calls this function.

Answer 4

Use a form/service object http://blog.codeclimate.com/blog/2012/10/17/7-ways-to-decompose-fat-activerecord-models/ to encapsulate expense report