Ruby on Rails: How do I add placeholder text to a f.text_field?

How can I add placeholder text to my f.text_field fields so that the text comes pre-written by default, and when a user click inside the fields, the text goes away - allowing the user to type in the new text?

Solution 1:

With rails >= 3.0, you can simply use the placeholder option.

f.text_field :attr, placeholder: "placeholder text"

Solution 2:

In Rails 4(Using HAML):

=f.text_field :first_name, class: 'form-control', autofocus: true, placeholder: 'First Name'

Solution 3:

For those using Rails(4.2) Internationalization (I18n):

Set the placeholder attribute to true:

f.text_field :attr, placeholder: true

and in your local file (ie. en.yml):

en:
  helpers:
    placeholder:
      model_name:
        attr: "some placeholder text"

Solution 4:

I tried the solutions above and it looks like on rails 5.* the second agument by default is the value of the input form, what worked for me was:

text_field_tag :attr, "", placeholder: "placeholder text"