Default value depending on the controller action

[Vitaly]

The solution that is good for me:

<% if controller.action_name == 'new' %>
<%= f.text_field :image_url, :value => 'no image' %>
<% else %>
<%= f.text_field :image_url %>
<% end %>

and then in index.erb set smth like that
<%= product.image_url == 'no image' ? image_tag("/images/
empty.png", :alt => 'Book cover', :class => 'list_image') :
image_tag("/images/#{product.image_url}", :alt => 'Book cover', :class
=> 'list_image') %>
to set work on the default value for this.

[Luke Cowell]

You're not really asking a question, but if you're looking for
feedback on your code, I'm happy to provide my 2 cents.

It appears that image_url just returns a string as a path to an image
under /images/ on your web server.

I would override the default accessor for image_url in your model code
eg.

def image_url
url_string = read_attribute(:image_url)
url_string.blank? ? "defaultpath.png" : url_string
end

This way you can check the state of the model to determine what to
render in the view instead of testing which controller action is being
called. For example, what if you had a product without a url ? Your
code would break when you call the edit action even though you would
want to render the default value for product. This could could be
taken a lot further, but I'll wait to see if this is helpful to you.

Also, image_tag references images relative to /images/ on your web
server, so the image you'd be looking for would be under the page /
images/images/#{image_url}

Hope that helps,

Luke

[Vitaly]

Oops, I'm sorry. I thought I answered to some open topic with this,
and didn't know I started a new one.

Well, thank you for you idea, Luke. I though about putting work with
data to model, and I think you are right.
As for empty field, I add validates to model to check that this field
isn't empty, and also add explanation to the error note.
Sure, I can allow to leave it just blank for 'no image', but validate
for presence will make user sure he didn't forget to put the image
url, and along with format validation with regular expression, it will
minimize the number of mistakes I think.

Well, actually that was a test and I'm just learning Rails, so I guess
my way is not really good on the point of usability, and it's not a
right thing, but i'm just testing :)

Peace,
Vit