I've got 2 classes of objects... Magician has_many Rabbits and Rabbit belongs_to Magician.

When viewing a Magician (show.html) I'd like to list all the associated Rabbits and then have some blank fields with a submit button to add a new Rabbit. To do so I build a new rabbit (associated to the current magician) in the Magician's show method (below).

Edit2: found way to make it work but not sure if it's the "Rails way"?

see comments inline (below): If I build the rabbit in Magician's show method then when show is rendered an empty (and invalid) rabbit ends the list before the new rabbit form fields are then shown.

If I build it in the view itself then everything works & renders correctly. I was led to believe that we should not be doing this type of stuff in the view...if so, what's the proper way to address this?

#/app/controllers/magicians_controller.rb
class MagiciansController < ApplicationController
  respond_to :html, :json

  def show
    @magician = Magician.find(params[:id])
    @rabbit = @magician.rabbits.build  # <=== build here and empty rabbit gets 
       # included in @magician.rabbits when they're rendered...
       # but is NOT included in @magician.rabbits.count for some reason?!?!?
    respond_with(@magician)
  end
...
end

#view/magicians/show.html.haml
%p
  %b Name:
  = @magician.name

%h2 Rabbits
= "There are #{pluralize(@magician.rabbits.count, "rabbit")}"
= render @magician.rabbits, :target => @magician

%h2 Add a rabbit:
- @rabbit = @clown.rabbits.build -# <=== build here and everything SEEMS to work
= render :partial =>"rabbits/form", :locals => { :parent => @magician, :foreign_key => :magician_id, :flash => flash } 

Edit1: Adding generated html from partial as per request:

  <p>
    <b>Rabbit:</b>

    <b>Color:</b>

    |
    <b>ID:</b>

    <a href="/magicians/2/rabbits" data-confirm="Sure? A bunny will die" data-method="delete" rel="nofollow">Kill Rabbit</a>
  </p>

And I suppose you probably want to see the partial that generates this:

%p
  %b Rabbit:
  = rabbit.name

  %b Color: 
  = rabbit.color
  |
  %b ID:
  = rabbit.id
  = link_to("Kill Rabbit", [target, rabbit], :method => :delete, :confirm => "Sure? A bunny will die")