Send Multiple forms (edit multiple objects) in one Submit button (Ruby) - html

Question

I have numerous objects (customers) populating a table and I need to edit a particular field for each row/customer (via radio buttons) and save all via a single submit button at the bottom of the table.
I figure it would be best to render a form for each line ("accept_reject_form") in which I have my two radio buttons but I can't figure out how to have the form so on submission each selection is saved for each of the customers.
I've spent a while looking at a few similar questions, but none quite address this problem. Any help would be much appreciated :-)
<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Name</th>
<th>Age</th>
<th>Available Actions</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<% #customers.each do |customer| %>
<tr>
<th><%= customer.name %></th>
<th><%= customer.age %></th>
<th><%= render 'accept_reject_form' %></th>
</tr>
<% end %>
</tbody>
</table>

Answer 1

You don't need a form per line: each form generates a request, this is hugely inefficient. Instead, the data submitted by the form needs to be structured in such a way that your controller action can update multiple records just by looking at the contents of params.
I would make sure that, in the accept_reject_form partial, you don't have the form tag and just have the fields. The form tag should be wrapped around the block where you iterate over #customer: in this case it will need to go around the whole table.
Give each field in your form partial a name value like
"customers[#{customer.id}][first_name]"
"customers[#{customer.id}][last_name]"
etc
This will then come through to the controller like
params = {:customers => {123 => {:first_name => "John", :last_name => "Smith"}, 456 => {:first_name => "Susan", :last_name => "Thompson"}}
Then in the controller (eg the update action) you can do something like this:
if params[:customer] && params[:id]
#traditional params structure for updating a single record
#customer = Customer.find_by_id(params[:id])
#customer.update_attributes(params[:customer])
elsif params[:customers] #note plural
#new params structure for updating multiple records
#customers = []
params[:customers].each do |id, attrs|
customer = Customer.find_by_id(id)
customer.update_attributes(attrs)
#customers << customer
end
end
this could use some error checking but you get the idea, hopefully.