undefined local variable or method `start_form_tag'
dc dc
I'm also suffering from the 'undefined local variable or method' problem
after having update my rails version to 2.0.
All worked fine before and now I get the following error:
undefined local variable or method `start_form_tag' in --->
<%= start_form_tag %>
What to do? If it can be at all helped I really don't want to alter the
source code as this is part of the open source package I'm using and I'm
two days away from consignment, so don't want it to break again if I
update later.
Any help would be much appreciated. Desperately trying to get this
deployed and working!!
--
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
Frederick Cheung
On 23 Dec 2007, at 15:09, dc dc wrote:
>
> Greetings,
>
> I'm also suffering from the 'undefined local variable or method'
> problem
> after having update my rails version to 2.0.
>
> All worked fine before and now I get the following error:
>
> undefined local variable or method `start_form_tag' in --->
>
> <%= start_form_tag %>
>
It was deprecated in 1.2 and removed in 2.0
Fred
> What to do? If it can be at all helped I really don't want to alter
> the
> source code as this is part of the open source package I'm using and
> I'm
> two days away from consignment, so don't want it to break again if I
> update later.
>
> Any help would be much appreciated. Desperately trying to get this
> deployed and working!!
> --
> Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
>
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Corey Haines
that start_form_tag has been superseded by just form_tag
(http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionView/Helpers/FormTagHelper.html#M001036)
-Corey
--
http://www.coreyhaines.com
The Internet's Premiere source of information about Corey Haines
dc dc
Just one follow up question. What's the closing tag. I've used:
<%= %>
which works, but I can't believe it's right.
Corey Haines
form_tag('/posts')
# => <form action="/posts" method="post">
form_tag('/posts/1', :method => :put)
# => <form action="/posts/1" method="put">
form_tag('/upload', :multipart => true)
# => <form action="/upload" method="post" enctype="multipart/form-data">
<% form_tag '/posts' do -%>
<div><%= submit_tag 'Save' %></div>
<% end -%>
# => <form action="/posts" method="post"><div><input type="submit"
name="submit" value="Save" /></div></form>
So, if you are passing a block, it puts the end </form>
--
dc dc
yes, I found the docs, but didn't know how to interpret them. I've just
got:
<%= form_tag %>
...... my html form complete with fields ......
<%= %>
which looks odd to me - but it seems to work.
Corey Haines
<%= form_tag do %>
<% .. put other generating methods here %>
<% end %>
which will wrap the entirety in a <form></form>
Perhaps if you posted your code block.
-Corey
--
dc dc
Here's my whole form block:
[code]
<%= form_tag %>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" border="0" style="width: 250px;
display: inline-table; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto">
<tr>
<td style="text-align: right; white-space: nowrap">
<label for="email"><%= l(:login_username) %>:</label>
</td>
<td>
<%= text_field_tag 'email' %></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: right; white-space: nowrap">
<label for="password"><%= l(:login_password) %>:</label>
</td>
<td>
<%= password_field_tag 'password' %></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: right">
</td>
<td style="text-align: left">
<%= submit_tag 'Log in' %>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<%= %>
[/code]
Frederick Cheung
On 23 Dec 2007, at 15:56, dc dc wrote:
>
> Corey,
> Here's my whole form block:
> [code]
> <%= form_tag %>
You should do
<% form_tag do %>
...
<% end %>
dc dc
yes, that makes sense
anti
...... ......
<%= %>
what is the difference between the two? they seem to be doing the
same thing
<% form_tag do %>
...
<% end %>
wrote:
Ryan Bigg
<% %> is an evaluation block, anything inside of it will be processed, but if it had any output it will not be shown on the screen.
Jeremy Weiskotten
http://api.rubyonrails.com/classes/ActionView/Helpers/FormHelper.html#M000920
Slain Wilde
start_form_tag and end_form_tag. It seems asinine to me.
My interpretation:
"Let's make everyone change hundreds of lines of code in dozens of
projects, which all need to be tested now because someone thought there
was a better way to do it."
I hope that one person just decided to do this by fiat, because if a
committee of people thought this was a good idea, then some of the more
acerbic comments I've seen about the Rails gurus starts making a little
more sense.
I won't argue that it isn't better: I'm sure you get better 'forgot to
close the form' error detection, or form within a form warnings, or
something. But there is really no good reason for it to break every
application out there that uses the old method. Progress for the sake
of progress isn't.
Frederick Cheung
On 27 Jan 2008, at 00:11, Slain Wilde wrote:
>
> I would really like to know the motivation behind getting rid of
> start_form_tag and end_form_tag. It seems asinine to me.
>
Because bloating the api isn't in general a good thing ?
Fred
Mark Reginald James
> I would really like to know the motivation behind getting rid of
> start_form_tag and end_form_tag. It seems asinine to me.
start_form_tag is still available as the non_block version of form_tag.
This is the only way to do it when the form straddles an erb block,
such as a cache block.
--
We develop, watch us RoR, in numbers too big to ignore.
Slain Wilde
> On 27 Jan 2008, at 00:11, Slain Wilde wrote:
>
>>
>> I would really like to know the motivation behind getting rid of
>> start_form_tag and end_form_tag. It seems asinine to me.
>>
> Because bloating the api isn't in general a good thing ?
>
> Fred
Which is I think is a pretty lame reason in this instance. I would
think that any reasonable analysis would show that effort required to
maintain a 'bloated' api is far and away less than the effort required
fix and test all of the existing code that uses the old method. Leave
it deprecated, so people don't use it.
Or, make a script that goes in the script folder that automatically
updates the code seemlessly for all deprecated features. If you can't
do that safely, then don't drop support. Cause I'm sitting here looking
at 40 rails sites I need to update now, with 500+ start/end_form_tag's
that I've got to go through and update and test. And while freezing
rails may let me put off the pain for some of the sites, at some point
it will have to be done.
And while functional testing, etc. might help automate some of this, the
reality is there are never enough test cases to find everything.
Slain Wilde
form_tag is also a non-block form of form_tag. Just don't put a do on
the end and close it with </form>.
Adam Ant
people for very little gain. i understand that the rails developers want
to have the best framework but at some point they need to realize that
you can spend too much time learning how to be productive, rather than
being productive.
it seems very sophomoric to constantly be rethinking these tags.
Ryan Bigg
shorter (form_tag vs start_form_tag and end vs end_form_tag) and makes
more sense.
Slain Wilde
You seem to have missed the point. No one here has indicated that the
new one isn't better: it is. That does not obviate the fact that the
old form was a widely used feature, and it has serious impacts on
backward compatibility. Case in point, I had mentioned 7 months ago in
my original posts that this would be a huge effort to upgrade/test, and
guess what, none of those projects have been upgraded and they all still
are running Rails 1.2.x. Only new development that doesn't rely on any
existing code has been coded with Rails 2, and none of that is in
production in my case. These kinds of things do have serious impacts on
adoption rates, satisfaction with the language and tools, etc.
Frederick Cheung
On Aug 14, 7:33 am, Slain Wilde <rails-mailing-l...@andreas-s.net>
wrote:
def start_form_tag(*args)
form_tag(*args)
end
def end_form_tag
'</form'>
end
in application_helper and be done with it.
Fred
Slain Wilde
>
> If you're that bothered just stick
>
> def start_form_tag(*args)
> form_tag(*args)
> end
>
> def end_form_tag
> '</form'>
> end
>
> in application_helper and be done with it.
>
> Fred
Hey, actual help. Who knew.
Geoff Ber
Though I appreciate streamlining API's, the reality is that anyone who
has a starter book on Ruby that's over 9 months old is not going to be
able to get a form working without googling around and reading through
technogarble.
Ruby adaptation is going to take a big hit for this.
This was a poor design decision. If the Ruby community is looking for
buy-in from the development community, they just moved one step away.
-Geoff
Michael Durrant
simple:
Poor error messages.
Imagine if instead of undecipherable error messages that take hour or
days to figure out, what if (in this example) the error message said
"form_for_tag is deprecated in Rails 2.0+, please consider using
form_for instead".
Imagine the frustration that would save! I think people would be a lot
less stressed out, pissed off and bitching on blogs/forums if they
hadn't spent hours trying to figure out weird error messages. They
would see the message, fix the code in mins with a global replace and
move on.
This ignores the deprecating issue itself (on purpose). Having worked
with dozens of languages with reasonable error messages over more years
than I care to admit, the Ror error messages continue to blow me away.
I'm sure there are some who will say 'read a book, understand the
architecture and ruby better'. But for the rest of us in the real
world, that doesn't cut it.
Having said all that.... the more cryptic the better, right? That way
we can charge $100,000 for being a good RoR programmer instead of
$30,000 (or less) which is what would happen if RoR was made easier and
I think better error messages would be the biggest change.
All imho of course - what do you think?
Keys to a good programmer - humbleness, humility and honesty.
Frederick Cheung
On Sep 15, 2:39 pm, Michael Durrant <li...@ruby-forum.com> wrote:
> I think the underlying issue for this and hundreds of similar ones is
> simple:
> Poor error messages.
> Imagine if instead of undecipherable error messages that take hour or
> days to figure out, what if (in this example) the error message said
> "form_for_tag is deprecated in Rails 2.0+, please consider using
> form_for instead".
>
rails/blob/v1.2.0/actionpack/lib/action_view/helpers/
form_tag_helper.rb) and then that method was removed almost a year
later. What more do you want?
Fred
Michael Durrant
You're kidding, right? Have you been (working) in the industry long?
Seriously. That sounds like a great answer from an incredibly
intelligent really good, ace rails programmer but not really related to
business needs. Ask any business person and always know that they pay
the bills :)
I genuinely would welcome a good - business - justification as to why 12
months is deemed an appropriate length of time. Why not 36 months? Also
why not better error messages generally?
I and many others need something that is around for longer than a year.
Applications, books, references, etc. should not all just become
'invalid' after 1 year and no longer have helpful warnings. and I'm at a
loss to understand why to remove something helpful?
Changing new docs, the api, etc that's all great and I totally support
it, it's the rails/open way after all to constantly improve, but break
an old thing within a year or 2, I don't get it. 'bloated api' reason?
I think we have the space now. See above, rinse, repeat.
But again, more income for us, right?
There's no substitute for business experience, but of course you can
lead a horse to water...
Thoughts?
>>
> A deprecation warning was added in 1.2.0 (http://github.com/rails/
> rails/blob/v1.2.0/actionpack/lib/action_view/helpers/
> form_tag_helper.rb) and then that method was removed almost a year
> later. What more do you want?
>
> Fred
--
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
Marnen Laibow-Koser
> Seeing as you asked ;)
> You're kidding, right? Have you been (working) in the industry long?
Yes (though I can't speak for Fred). And your answer makes many
incorrect assumptions and misses the point.
[...]
> I genuinely would welcome a good - business - justification as to why 12
> months is deemed an appropriate length of time.
Why wouldn't it be? We're not talking about a hosted service here; you
can continue to use old versions of Rails for as long as you want.
What's the business justification for keeping 3-year-old deprecations in
the API?
A deprecation says "the next time you upgrade, this feature might be
gone, so get rid of it now". If you can't handle that, then don't
upgrade.
> Why not 36 months?
What would the extra two years do, other than bloating the framework and
encouraging people not to take deprecation warnings seriously?
> Also
> why not better error messages generally?
That's a separate issue.
> I and many others need something that is around for longer than a year.
Then you are welcome to stick with an old version of Rails. No one is
forcing you to upgrade.
The nature of upgrades is to introduce changes. If you can't deal with
those changes, don't.
> Applications, books, references, etc. should not all just become
> 'invalid' after 1 year and no longer have helpful warnings.
Applications do not become invalid after 1 year, and I'm sure you know
this. There are still Rails 1.x apps out there that I'm sure are
working fine.
> and I'm at a
> loss to understand why to remove something helpful?
Because a better, more Rubyish way was found to do the same thing.
> Changing new docs, the api, etc that's all great and I totally support
> it, it's the rails/open way after all to constantly improve, but break
> an old thing within a year or 2, I don't get it.
"Backward compatibility means never being able to say 'oops, we
goofed'."
Best,
--
Marnen Laibow-Koser
http://www.marnen.org
mar...@marnen.org
Sent from my iPhone
Michael Durrant
versions and features & I DO love change, I don't think using old
versions are the answer and my boss doesn't understand 'bloated
frameworks'. I told him, well, it's not DRY and can mean duplicate code
and encourage people not to change to the new, etc, etc. but he said 'so
what?, point one thing to the other or something [which actually is
shown in the thread as a temp solution, very helpful!], just don't break
it'. The new way is much better, I agree 100%, though I still disagree
with it as a reason to allow the old way to become invalid in the
fashion that it did.
But I also think it's more philosophical in nature and there will always
be differences, not rights & wrongs (though not implied by you or
anyone). I certainly respect your opinion and experience and will take
them into account going forward. btw my live app actually is on a
hosted service and it does get tricky using lower versions with them,
wish I was in a big org and didn't need to worry!
For me the main item is - If all the 'old' books and posts could be
immediately destroyed this would be awesome and would certainly address
a great many of the issues, but they can't and folks are gonna keep
searching and spending ages chasing ghosts. I feel for my fellow
developers who seek answers. I think the philosophical difference is
also best exemplified by XHTML and WC3 and the browser wars for how
standards compliance can pan out, e.g. if <br>'s (not <br />'s) were
really enforced and pages broke. Similarly old browser versions were
not the answer there. Though I sure miss my Netscape! They voted, but
the vote was 11-8 againt the strict. So the '8' were not convinced and
probably never would be. Then again, the 11 probably wouldn't be either!
But that's ok, good for them, 'cos diversity is good!
At the very least I could easily live with the tag being removed I just
wish the error msg was left for longer. Would it really be that bad to
have it still? Again, I am referencing the error message. Because of
the blogs/books issue y'know. Just to help people more and save them
from themselves. Same principle though for many other (tags, controller
names, etc.).
I welcome further discussion. I would just ask you to bear in mind that
change is not all or nothing ("If you can't deal with those changes,
don't." wasn't very helpful) but there can be differences of opinion on
exactly how the changes are implemented.
Best, Michael.
Also (specifically):
Marnen Laibow-Koser wrote:
>
> A deprecation says "the next time you upgrade, this feature might be
> gone, so get rid of it now". If you can't handle that, then don't
> upgrade.
>
I didn't upgrade, just sought an answer.
> What would the extra two years do, other than bloating the framework and
> encouraging people not to take deprecation warnings seriously?
New to rail this in 2009, so never used 1.2 and never saw deprecation
warnings.
2 extra years would give people time, let new books come out, let old
books age out, let new forum posts become the standard, let old posts
get deleted, etc. Basically i think 3 years would be much nicer to
people. I don't have any fixed idea on what time period is 'right', I
just don't get why "1 year" is deemed 'right'. If shorter is better,
how about 3 months? I think it all comes down to peoples opinion of
what time is 'reasonable'. In the end there is always gonna be a
distribution curve of time opinions there, from 'none' to 'forever',
right?
>
>> Also
>> why not better error messages generally?
>
> That's a separate issue.
>
I think it's the biggest one.
>> I and many others need something that is around for longer than a year.
>
> Then you are welcome to stick with an old version of Rails. No one is
> forcing you to upgrade.
>
old versions missing much functionality - business reasons, hosting,
functionality and love of change certainly do pretty much force upgrades
- plus I can't simultaneously use multiple versions or my brain explodes
;)
> The nature of upgrades is to introduce changes. If you can't deal with
> those changes, don't.
>
i can, but i can disagree with how they are introduced based on
experience right? that's ok right?
>> Applications, books, references, etc. should not all just become
>> 'invalid' after 1 year and no longer have helpful warnings.
>
> Applications do not become invalid after 1 year, and I'm sure you know
> this. There are still Rails 1.x apps out there that I'm sure are
> working fine.
>
I do know that. But I can't keep developing in old and multiple versions
and know what worx in what and stay sane :) Because I do love change and
need the newer versions I... need the newer versions.
>
>> and I'm at a
>> loss to understand why to remove something helpful?
>
> Because a better, more Rubyish way was found to do the same thing.
>
Sure and that's great. I'm really more concerned about the error
messages removal, not the tag removal.
>> Changing new docs, the api, etc that's all great and I totally support
>> it, it's the rails/open way after all to constantly improve, but break
>> an old thing within a year or 2, I don't get it.
>
> "Backward compatibility means never being able to say 'oops, we
> goofed'."
>
or... "Backward compatibility can mean saying 'oops, we goofed', here's
a new and better way to do it, but don't worry, your existing code base
and reference material will still be ok under the new version."
>
But again philosophy and see wc3 & browser standards above.
When a tag is really removed, if the 'remover' could remove all the main
threads in Rails Forums, etc., much as that might take a big effort, now
that would really stand out as a big help.
James Byrne
> It was deprecated in 1.2 and removed in 2.0
>
> Fred
On the subject of error messages, with deprecations specifically in
mind, I suggest the following approach at least be considered.
Establish a deprecated_methods_index library at the top level of Rails
so that, when someone finally decides to upgrade their Rails-1.0.6 app
to Rails-whatever, instead of getting:
"undefined local variable or method `whatever'"
(which is generated by ruby itself and not by Rails)
one obtains the output from something like this:
def whatever(*parms)
puts("whatever method is deprecated and was removed in rails-x.y.z.")
puts("Use other_one method instead.")
end
If these are all kept in one place surely it would not be too difficult
to maintain? Are there any downsides to this approach, other than having
to write four lines of code for every deprecated method?
Michael Durrant
James you are the MAN.
Just suggesting a reasonable solution is awesome and I really mean it.
I would hire you in an instant!
No sly insults or anything in your message, now that's the way forward.
Give me your email and I'll paypal you right now. I use
ju...@snap2web.com on public forums.
VERY much appreciated.
Michael.