How to use in_place_editor in Rails 2.x

22 Jul 2009 | Rails

Install the plugin

./script/plugin install git://github.com/rails/in_place_editing.git

We supose that we have a "State" model with a "name" attribute and we want to edit it “in place”. Add in your controller

class StatesController < ApplicationController
  in_place_edit_for :state, :name
end

This method adds an action called "set_state_name" which updates the attribute specified, in this case "name" (see the code for more details).

Now, you can use the helper that the plugin adds

<span id="edit_field"><%=h state.name %></span>
<%= in_place_editor 'edit_field',  :url => url_for(:action => :set_state_name, :id => state.id) %>

Important Note: This plugin has a problem: it isn't RESTful, you can't do this

<%= in_place_editor 'edit_field',  :url => url_for(:action => :update, :id => state.id) %>

The method used to send the form is POST, you can't access a resource via PUT method, therefore you can't access "update" action in the controller.

That's all!