How to create a multi-edit form in rails - ruby-on-rails

Question

I need to create a multi-edit form in rails, like so:
<form>
<input type='text' name='input1'></input>
<input type='text' name='input2'></input>
<input type='text' name='input3'></input>
<input type='text' name='input4'></input>
<input type='text' name='input5'></input>
<br>
<input type='text' name='input1'></input>
<input type='text' name='input2'></input>
<input type='text' name='input3'></input>
<input type='text' name='input4'></input>
<input type='text' name='input5'></input>
<br>
<input type='text' name='input1'></input>
<input type='text' name='input2'></input>
<input type='text' name='input3'></input>
<input type='text' name='input4'></input>
<input type='text' name='input5'></input>
<br>
... and so on, then the "<submit>" button will be at the very end. One click of the submit button at the end should collect all the values and parse them in the controller.
I just need to know how to generate the multi-edit form in the view. Also, each row is unique; I'd also need to know how to assign a unique identifier to each of the input tags I guess; I do have a unique ID value I could use.

Answer 1

This is trivial to accomplish, but we need more information. How are these fields related to your models? Is this one model with many fields, many instances of a model or something else?
What you want to do in this situation is use a form builder. It will generate input fields according to a naming convention that will be parsed into a much more useful format when it gets to the controller. Since I have no information about your models, I will use a hypothetical example:
class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
attr_accessible :title, :body, :author, :published_at
end
Create the form using the form_for helper. It will give you a formbuilder object to create the input fields.
<% form_for :post do |f| -%>
<p>
<%= f.label :title %>
<%= f.text_field :title %>
</p>
<p>
<%= f.label :body %>
<%= f.text_area :body %>
</p>
<p>
<%= f.label :author %>
<%= f.text_field :author %>
</p>
<p>
<%= f.label :published_at %>
<%= f.datetime_select :published_at %>
</p>
<% end -%>
The key benefit of using helpers is the name attribute of the inputs it generates. Since body belongs to a form for post it will be given the name attribute post[body]. These attributes will be parsed into the following hash:
:post => {
:title => "This is the title",
:body => "this is the body",
:author => "John Doe",
:published_at => "Mon Nov 15 2010 19:23:40 GMT-0600 (CST)"
}
This means you don't need to manually copy fields into a model. You can just pass it directly to the Model#new method:
#post = Post.new(params[:post])
and then do your validation checks. This convention becomes indispensable when you start nesting models inside one another.
See here for a more thorough guide to form helpers.