Radio buttons on Rails

Question

Similar to this question: Checkboxes on Rails

What's the correct way of making radio buttons that are related to a certain question in Ruby on Rails? At the moment I have:

<div class="form_row">
    <label for="theme">Theme:</label>
    <br><%= radio_button_tag 'theme', 'plain', true %> Plain
    <br><%= radio_button_tag 'theme', 'desert' %> Desert
    <br><%= radio_button_tag 'theme', 'green' %> Green
    <br><%= radio_button_tag 'theme', 'corporate' %> Corporate
    <br><%= radio_button_tag 'theme', 'funky' %> Funky
</div>

I also want to be able to automatically check the previously selected items (if this form was re-loaded). How would I load the params into the default value of these?

Answer 1

As in this previous post, with a slight twist:

<div class="form_row">
    <label for="theme">Theme:</label>
    <% [ 'plain', 'desert', 'green', 'corporate', 'funky' ].each do |theme| %>
      <br><%= radio_button_tag 'theme', theme, @theme == theme %>
      <%= theme.humanize %>
    <% end %>
</div>

Where

@theme = params[:theme]

Answer 2

Same as V's, but has associated labels with each radio button. Clicking the label checks the radio button.

<div class="form_row">
  <p>Theme:</p>
  <% [ 'plain', 'desert', 'green', 'corporate', 'funky' ].each do |theme| %>
    <br><%= radio_button_tag 'theme', theme, @theme == theme %>
    <%= label_tag "theme_#{theme}", theme.humanize %>
  <% end %>
</div>

Answer 3

Using Haml, getting rid of needless br tags, and nesting inputs within label so that they may be selected without matching labels to ids. Also using form_for. I would consider this to be following best practices.

= form_for current_user do |form|
  .form_row
    %label Theme:
    - [ 'plain', 'desert', 'green', 'corporate', 'funky' ].each do |theme|
      %label
        = form.radio_button(:theme, theme)
        = theme.humanize

Answer 4

I would suggest having a look at formtastic

It makes radio button and check box collections vastly easier and more concise. Your code would look like so:

    <% semantic_form_for @widget, :html => {:class => 'my_style'} do |f| %>
<%= f.input :theme, :as => :radio, :label => "Theme:", 
:collection =>  [ 'plain', 'desert', 'green', 'corporate', 'funky' ] %>
<% end %>

Formtastic is largely unobtrusive and can be mixed and matched with the "classic" form builders. You can also override the formtastic css class for the form as I did above with
:html => {:class => 'my_style'}

Have a look at the pertinent Railscasts.

Update: I've recently moved to Simple Form which has similar syntax to formtastic but is more lightweight and especially leaves the styling to your own css.