saving selection from collection_select and passing to controller

Question

I have a dropdownmenu which populates from the database. I'm using the following code to do it:-

<%= collection_select(:abc, :SkillSetName, @technologies, :id, :Topic) %>

I have no idea what :abc and :SkillSetName are doing here. I just know that the drop down is being populated with :Topic from my @technologies variable. I want to save the selection made by the user from the drop down menu and send it to the next controller action. I don't want to use f.collection_select

Answer 1

:abc stand for your object and :SkillSetName stand for your method.

when you want to save its value you can get it using params[:abc][:SkillSetName]

Answer 2

If you don't know what :abc and :SkillSetName are, how are we supposed to know?

Anyway, the user's selection will be in:

params[:abc][:SkillSetName]

If you want to understand what you are doing, have a look at the API for collection_select.

Answer 3

See my answer - RoR: collection_select not setting the value in the DB