here's a tricky little bug in Rails:
If you omit the :update parameter in a observe_form call, like this:
<%= observe_form 'form1',
:url => {:action=>'todo_line', :only_path => false} %>
Rails won't return the params of the form to the application with todo_line. You need to pass an empty hash for :update, like this:
<%= observe_form 'form1',
:update => {},
:url => {:action=>'todo_line', :only_path => false} %>
I got all this from the rails wiki.