In the solution branch, the SongsController has p song_params in the create method. What is that? Why is it there?

I had a student ask me and I had no reasoning to give him.

On the solution, I noticed 2 odd things about the note_contents= implementation. I'm not sure if these are intentional.

1. Say you have an existing song s with note_contents ["note 1", "note 2"]. If you call s.note_contents=["Revised Notes"], it looks like the note contents are now "note 1", "note 2" and "Revised Notes". I think I would have expected the old notes to be replaced by the new assignment.

2. Lets say there is a song s1 with note "Recorded July 2018" and another song s2 with note "Recorded July 2018". It looks like both these songs will be pointing to the same note id. It seems that this could lead to problems (like if s1 is deleted including references to notes, then s2 will be missing its note?)

Was this behavior intended? I tried to address 2nd item in my implementation but I think a little messy
def note_contents=(arry)
arry.delete_if(&:blank?).each { |c|
if !Note.find_by(content: c, song_id: self.id)
self.notes.build(content: c)
end
}
end

In song_form_spec.rb, the test to create a song with a genre is looking for a song_genre_id field

select 'Alternative', from: 'song_genre_id'

which I understand will mean that a genre_id=(id) setter will be needed in the Song model. This will also mean that the strong params will need to permit :genre_id. However, in song_spec.rb, it tests for a genre_name setter and getter method, as well.

song.genre_name = 'Rock'

Working through the specs, I was struggling to get all the tests passing. It was a bit confusing having to write both genre setter/getter methods into the Song model to get the tests to pass. I also noticed that the genre_id setter/getter was not included into the solution, and I was not able to pass the lab without those methods. As I was looking through the history of the solution branch, I noticed that the New form did use :genre_name at one point before being switched over to :genre_id.

Also test mentions a datalist? Should we use a datalist? The solution doesn't use a datalist I don't think. So the the test information doesn't help you to solve the problem when it mentions something you don't need to use.

In the Rails Forms and Basic Associations Lab, in the songs_controller, how are we supposed to know the format of note_contents in the strong params? (note_contents: [ ]) A future lab (Has Many Through In Forms) goes over this.

The lesson says the associations haven't been wired up, but they are already wired up.

I worked with a student on this today and it seems that sometime in the recent past the tests and the solution branch have been refactored to use the accepts_nested_attributes rails helper which hasn't yet been taught to the students. There should be no expectation for them to be using this method to complete the lab. The old solution and tests tested for the manual creation of the notes via a notes_contents=method as well as manually creating the html input elements on the page.

Here is my fork of the lab which better follows the intent of the lab in context with the previous readme lesson: https://github.com/Sillhouette/forms-and-basic-associations-rails-lab-v-000

@rrcobb @maxwellbenton

The solution branch has some controller tests and model tests for song that aren't included on the master branch. I'm guessing these should be added into the master branch.

Also, there are several pending specs in both master and solution that should be removed.

Confusing lab. The previous lesson did not do a good job of explaining the data flow in this lab as well as the methods. The method below was not discussed at all in the previous lab and it's not intuitive.

    notes.each do |content|
      if content.strip != ''
        self.notes.build(content: content)
      end
    end
  end

  def note_contents
    self.notes.map(&:content)
  end 

https://github.com/learn-co-curriculum/forms-and-basic-associations-rails-lab#instructions

Instructions

The base models, controllers, and seed data have been provided for you. The associations have not been wired up.

• Write app/views/songs/new.html.erb. This form should have:
  • A text input box that sets the song's title.
  • A text input box for the artist, which autocompletes with existing Artist names.

There's currently no test to ensure that the artist text input box "autocompletes with existing Artist names." Also, the solution branch code does not implement this feature.

Note: "For the Forms and Basic Associations Rails Lab, i think the instructions should be more clear about needing custom setter and getter methods in the song model for creating notes for a song."

Reference

Under instructions, it says: "Songs belong to both and have many notes." So I think "has many notes" should also be added to Song bullet points.

The objectives seem to be copy and pasted from the previous lesson and do not describe the specifications of this lab.