passing variables from search-form to booking-form, Ruby on Rails

Question

I want to create a reservationsystem for hotels as a project for my university, i have a searchform which should display all available rooms.

<%= form_tag mainpage_path, :method => 'get' do  %>
    <p>
      <%= select_tag(:search, options_for_select([['Einzelzimmer'], ['Doppelzimmer']]))%>
      <br/>
      Arrival: <%= date_select :arrival, 'Arrival', use_short_month: true, order: [:day, :month, :year] %>  <br/>
      Departure: <%= date_select :departure, 'Departure', use_short_month: true, order: [:day, :month, :year], default:Date.tomorrow %>  <br/>
      <%params[:search] %>
      <%params[:arrival]%>
      <%params[:departure]%>
      <%= submit_tag "Search" %>
    </p>
<% end %>

if this all works, you should see an available room, which you can reserve. but i want to save the params[:arrival] and params[:departure] and pass them to the booking form, because otherwise the user has to fill in the arrival and departure dates again. Is there any technique i can use to solve that?

Thank you in advance

Answer 1

You would need to store the arrival and departure time in an instance variable in your search controller, so you can access it during view rendering, i.e. during displaying available rooms.

class SearchController < ApplicationController

  def search
    @arrival   = params[:arrival]
    @departure = params[:departure]

    # Do all the searching and store them in @rooms

    respond_with @rooms
  end

end

Then render your view for selecting a room

<%= render :partial => 'room', :collection => @rooms %>

and link each room to the booking path and pass in the arrival and departure date:

<%= link_to "Book room #{room.id}", book_room_path(room, :arrival => @arrival, :departure => @departure %>

By passing in a hash to #link_to, you can set GET parameters, which you can read out again in your BookingsController.

This is a pretty basic example, but you can extend it in any way you like.

Answer 2

As suggested, you can use hidden form fields, or you can do a complete turnaround and look at your process as a wizard form that has to carry state through several actions.

If this suits you, use Wicked to turn your controller into a wizard.