What's the strategy for a tags field that's a belongs_to of another model?

[johlym]

In my app, I have a MenuItem with a reusable Style, and said Style can have one or more MenuItems. I'm at a loss as to how to implement this in the MenuItem resource (specifically as a tags field). Ideally, I'd like to feed the suggestions something like Style.pluck(:name), limit it to 1 tag, and have, if new ones not on the suggestion list are added, a new Style is created.

It seems like ActsAsTaggableOn might work here, but I haven't explored whether this concept of tagging stuff will expand to other attributes or models so I don't know if it's just overcomplication.

Input appreciated!

[Paul-Bob]

Hi @johlym I'm not sure if I understand.

Why aren't you using belongs_to field and trying to use tags?

[johlym]

Thanks for replying @Paul-Bob ! Fair question, for sure.

Mostly the UI. belongs_to seems to limit me to a dropdown (unless I'm missing something)? There'll be cases where the Style doesn't exist, yet, and there's a higher cognitive load for folks creating new ones than simply typing in a new one into a tags field and having it magically exist on save.

[Paul-Bob]

Mostly the UI. belongs_to seems to limit me to a dropdown (unless I'm missing something)?

On Avo pro and above, you can make the belongs to searchable: true (docs here) and it will behave like the course field here: https://main.avodemo.com/avo/resources/course_links/new

and there's a higher cognitive load for folks creating new ones than simply typing in a new one into a tags field and having it magically exist on save.

If you only require a label to create a new style and belongs_to is not the right UI/UX for you, I think you can go in the tags direction.

---

I suggest starting by reading the whole tags docs page, after that, you'll have an overview of all the possibilities and how to combine options to achieve your desired output.

You could use select mode (docs here) combined with suggestions if you have a small amount of styles or fetch_values_from on larger amounts of styles.

[johlym]

Thanks, @Paul-Bob! For now, I went in the direction of the tag with ActsAsTaggableOn, and a tags field, but it's not ideal since it allows more than one tag, and there appears to be no way to enforce limits (ex: ensuring only one tag is assigned). That and it's a big hammer for a small nail, so to speak.

I'll take another look at belongs_to. Making it searchable gets me a lot closer to where I'd like to be, for sure.

Ultimately, since I need to create relationships between the MenuItem and Style records (ex: Style.where(name: 'stout').menu_items), having static tags written to each MenuItem won't ultimately work. Bringing ActsAsTaggableOn into the picture closed that gap and helped build the association aspect of this, but like I said, big hammer.