rails form select multiple gives empty first value

Question

I have defined has_and_belongs_to_many associations between Meals and Recipes. In the Meals create form, I am using a select to populate the recipes.

<%= f.select :recipes, Recipe.all.collect { |x| [x.name, x.id]}, {}, :multiple => true %>

But the result set has a nil as the first value.

"recipes"=>["", "2", "7"]

How can I eliminate the empty/nil value?

Answer 1

For me setting :include_hidden => false is what worked

<%= f.select :recipes, Recipe.all.collect { |x| [x.name, x.id]}, {:include_hidden => false}, :multiple => true %>