Rails simple_form association not saving to db

Question

I have 2 models with a HABTM relationship: authors and publications.

Using simple_form, I was able to create a add new publication form that shows all of the possible authors as checkboxes. However, these associations are not saving to my db.

I know this is a params permit issue, but I'm not sure how to properly write it. Currently I have:

def publication_params
    params.require(:publication).permit(:publication_id, :name, :year_published, :month_published, :day_published, :citation, :source, :abstract)
end

How do I write this so that rails can allow the association from the authors table (which has only two columns-- author_id and name) to be saved too?

Answer 1

Got it!

I had to add accepts_nested_attributes_for :authors, :journals into my publication model. Then in my publications_controller, I had to change my params to:

def publication_params
    params.require(:publication).permit(:publication_id, :name, :year_published, :month_published, :day_published, :citation, :source, :abstract, :author_ids => [], :journal_ids => [])
end

This allowed me to save new associations to my db, and it updated my join table correctly.

Answer 2

Add author_id to the params:

def publication_params
    params.require(:publication).permit(:author_id, :publication_id, :name, :year_published, :month_published, :day_published, :citation, :source, :abstract)
end