Rails Forms and Request Parameters

Sometimes in our Rails applications we need to build forms that represent state stored in URL query parameters that is independent of any persisted object in our backend datastore, like in the case of a search form. In this post I offer a simple, flexible, generic helper for doing just that.

NOTE: I first detailed this helper in a larger post on basic RESTful filtering in Rails.

In a stock Rails app, we build forms using the form_for helper. This helper method expects an object, not a hash, so we cannot simply pass some params hash into the helper. Moreover, if you dig into the source code for the form_for method and the FormBuilder object it creates, you will see that it inspects the object it is passed for a #model_name method when constructing input names. It then expects the return value of the #model_name method to respond to the #param_key method (these methods are part of the ActiveModel::Naming module). So, in order for our custom built object to work with form_for the way that we desire, we simply need to ensure that object.model_name.param_key returns the parameter namespace we desire.

So, we need a helper that:

1. takes a param name
2. returns an object
3. that object returns the param name for the model_name.param_key getter chain
4. that object returns any values stored in the params under the appropriate (possibly nested) keys

In order to access the appropriate bit of the URL query parameters, our helper first needs to accept the name of the param we are interested in:

module FormForHelper
  def form_for_object_from_param(param)
  end
end
module FormForHelper
  def form_for_object_from_param(param)
  end
end

We then need to get the URL query parameters for this param key from the current request parameters (luckily for us, Rails provides the params getter to return an ActionController::Parameters object):

module FormForHelper
  def form_for_object_from_param(param)
    form_for_params = params.fetch(param, {})
  end
end
module FormForHelper
  def form_for_object_from_param(param)
    form_for_params = params.fetch(param, {})
  end
end

In order to convert the hash returned from the params.fetch call, we can use the JSON.parse(hash.to_json, object_class: OpenStruct) approach:

module FormForHelper
  def form_for_object_from_param(param)
    form_for_params = params.fetch(param, {})
 
    JSON.parse(form_for_params.to_json,
               object_class: OpenStruct)
  end
end
module FormForHelper
  def form_for_object_from_param(param)
    form_for_params = params.fetch(param, {})

    JSON.parse(form_for_params.to_json,
               object_class: OpenStruct)
  end
end

Finally, in order to ensure that the model_name.param_key getter chain returns the param name, we simply merge the params hash with a hash that OpenStruct will convert into that getter chain:

module FormForHelper
  def form_for_object_from_param(param)
    form_for_params = params.fetch(param, {})
    form_for_requirements = { model_name: { param_key: param } }
 
    JSON.parse(form_for_params.merge(form_for_requirements).to_json,
               object_class: OpenStruct)
  end
end
module FormForHelper
  def form_for_object_from_param(param)
    form_for_params = params.fetch(param, {})
    form_for_requirements = { model_name: { param_key: param } }

    JSON.parse(form_for_params.merge(form_for_requirements).to_json,
               object_class: OpenStruct)
  end
end

And there it is! This is a simple, flexible, generic helper to create an object that can be passed to form_for which is backed by URL query parameters.