interesting way of updating text field in rails... without ajax requests....

gistfile1.rhtml

<%= select_tag("objective[indicator_id]", options_for_select([["seleccione indicador",0]] + @indicators.map {|u| [u.name,u.id]}, selected = var_indicator ) , html_options = {:onchange => "this.form.elements['objective[criteria]'].value = this.form.elements['tmp_objective[indicator_id]'].options[ this.form.elements['objective[indicator_id]'].selectedIndex ].text "}) %>

<%= text_area_tag "objective[criteria]", var_criteria.to_s , :rows => 5, :cols => 70 %></td>

<div style="display:none;VISIBILITY:none;"   >
  <%= collection_select("tmp_objective", "indicator_id" , @indicators, "id", "suggested_criteria", options ={:prompt=>""}) %>
</div>

the idea is to select something in the select tag and fill the text area with some info from the DB....

so what is done: select something and have a js that looks up the selection id, in another collection_select (which has the needed information) and find the equivalent id there,,, and put the info into de text_area_tag...

hacky... weird... obstrusive... but works... with no additional actions added to controller, and is vanilla js...