Rails collection_select is not accepting a :selected option

Question

I'm using a collection_select to display the contents of a hash:

Hash

CATEGORY1_TEXT_STYLE = {
  'Normal' => 'normal',
  'Normal Centered' => 'normal center',
  'Bold' => 'bold'
  ...
}

Collection Select

= collection_select :category1_style1, :first, Homepage::CATEGORY1_TEXT_STYLE, :last, :first, options = { :selected => style_selected(@style.first) }

style_selected (from helper)

def style_selected(value)
  returnval = ''
  Homepage::CATEGORY1_TEXT_STYLE.each { |key, val| returnval = key if val == value }
  returnval
end

Controller

@style = Homepage.find(0).category1_style.gsub('-', '').split("\n")[1..-1]

This outputs: [" bold center", " blue center", " normal center", " blue center"]

It's confusing because I'm not sure how to get it to choose a selected value based on that hash. I've done it before using id values (numbers) and it works, but this key/value pair is both strings and the :selected => "" field doesn't seem to want to take a string to match again, whether it's a match for the key or the value (I've tried both).

Any insight on trying to have a collection select display a default selected value when dealing with strings?

Thanks!

Answer 1

The answer is here: http://apidock.com/rails/ActionView/Helpers/FormOptionsHelper/collection_select#632--selected

If you want some object to be selected by default, be sure to use its id, not the whole object.