Country has_many Channels select checkboxes

I feel like this should be simple but I'm having issues getting it to work. I've tried HABTM but I don't think it's what I need.

A 'Country' has_many 'Channels' and a 'Channel' belongs_to a 'Country'. Basically I want to list the countries with checkboxes on the channels form and have it save an array of countries in the country_id.

Here's the view:

<%= f.label :country_id, "Countries" %><br />
<ul style="padding: 0; margin: 0;"开发者_高级运维>
  <% for country in Country.find(:all) %>
    <li style="list-style: none;">
      <%= check_box_tag "channel[country_ids][]", :name => "channel[country_ids][]" %>
      <%= label_tag country.id, country.name %>
    </li>
  <% end %>
</ul>

country.rb

class Country < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :channel
  has_many :satellites
  has_many :statistics
  has_many :testimonies
  has_many :videos
  attr_accessible :name, :coords

  def hash
    name.gsub(" ", "_").downcase
  end
end

channel.rb

class Channel < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :countries
  attr_accessible :name, :logo, :country_id
end

I'm going to be doing the same thing with satellites, statistics, testimonies, and videos as well.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

FYI I'm doing this in Rails 2.3.8 and not Rails 3.

If you mean that you want to store a list of country id's in a string field in the channels table, this is how I would do it:

(I'm not a 100% sure it would work in Rails 2.3, but it should, maybe a little tweaking may be needed)

In form view:

<% Country.find(:all).each do |country| %>
  <%= check_box_tag "channel[country_ids][#{country.id}]", country.id, false, :name => "channel[country_ids][]" %><%= label_tag "country[country_ids][#{country.id}]", country.description %>
<% end %>

In model:

class Channel < ActiveRecord::Base

  before_create :prepare_for_create

  attr_accessible :country_ids


  def prepare_for_create
    self.country_ids = self.country_ids.join(",")
  end
end

You say:

save an array of countries in the country_id

When you specify country_id on Channel it means that the channel belongs to one country. It sounds more like you want a channel to have many countries though...perhaps it's a M:M relationship you want? Either way, you can't "save an array" to country_id or any field on a model...at least not for what you're trying to accomplish.

Also, belongs_to :countries should be belongs_to :country