How can I use token fields with acts_as_taggable_on and formtastic?

Question

I would like to be able to use the token fields (found here: http://railscasts.com/episodes/258-token-fields ) with formtastic to allow users to input tags (I am using acts_as_taggable_on).

Can someone walk me through an example of how to do this?

Answer 1

I don't have the time for a full walk-through, but the guts of this seems to be that a text_field has a data-pre attribute with some JSON in it. The way to add attributes to inputs in Formtastic is via the:input_html option, so this:

<p>
  <%= f.label :author_tokens, "Authors" %><br />
  <%= f.text_field :author_tokens, "data-pre" => @book.authors.map(&:attributes).to_json %>
</p>

Might be translated to something like:

<%= f.input :author_tokens, :input_html => { "data-pre" => @book.authors.map(&:attributes).to_json } %>

The rest is gluing CSS to HTML and finding the right DOM element to apply the jQuery to (view source is your friend).