In_place_editor with a collection in a partial in Ruby on Rails

It seems like it would take a lot of work to get the in_place_editor to work in a partial on a collection, but it does. (It took me a lot of time to figure this out, but maybe I’m just more than average dense.) The best post to-date on this is at we eat bricks.

Just add the usual in the controller (user_controller.rb):

in_place_edit_for :user, :name

And, of course, the method:

def edit
  @users = User.find(:all)
end

Then, in the main view (edit.rhtml):

<%= render :partial=>'user', :collection=>@users %>

Then, in the partial (_users.rhtml):

<%= in_place_editor_field :model, :column %>

At first, this won’t work. You will get an error that says “Called id for nil, which would mistakenly be 4 – if you really wanted the id of nil, use object_id” on the line containing the in_place_editor_field.

It turns out this is a bug, and there is a workaround. Just add this at the top of your partial:

<%- @user = user -%>

I hope this helps someone save some time.