How to render one association automatically with cocoon

Question

I have cocoon working with nested form, if you click add field link it inserts input fields. How do I render first input automatically, and then insert additional inputs when "add field" is clicked ?

Answer 1

In your controller, use this code. In the code below, jobs is a model and profile accepts_nested_attributes_for jobs. Replace @profile with whatever your form is for. The 2nd line is what will build the form fields, unless form fields already exist.

def new
    @profile = current_user.profile
    1.times {@profile.jobs.build} unless current_user.profile.jobs.any?
end

You may need to change times to time since its singular. In fact, you may be able to get rid of the times method altogether and do:

def new
    @profile = current_user.profile
    @profile.jobs.build unless current_user.profile.jobs.any?
end

Answer 2

The quick and dirty solution is to just use jQuery (which Cocoon requires anyways) to click Cocoon's "add item" button when the page loads:

$(document).ready(function() { $(".add_fields").click() } );

I use this in my "new" views, but not in "edit" views, since there may already be some nested items and I don't want to make assumptions. But you could also use script to count the nested item forms and conditionally show the "new item" fields.