I have been try to make a page where a user can add something to a list and then delete something from the same list all without re-loading the page. The adding part is easy, but the deleting part is turning out to be a pain.
A user by the name of Philip gave me some very helpful hints: Put the snip of rHTML that needs to refresh into a partial. Include it the normal way, like this:
<div id='refresh_me'> <%= render :partial => 'my_partial' %> </div>
Now wire link_to_remote up to an action that looks like this:
def my_action return unless request.xhr? render :update do |page| # <-- I call that rjs sometimes! page.replace_html 'refresh_me', :partial => 'my_partial' end end
The deal is that almost* anything you can pass to render, you can also pass to the second argument to JavaScriptGenerator#replace_html.
The first code injects raw HTML into your page as it renders, before it goes over the wire. The second snip renders the partial, then creates JavaScript containing Element.update('refresh_me', '<my partial html >'). This goes over the wire, and the Ajax handlers from prototype.js will replace the innerHTML member of that <div id='refresh_me'> with the new version.
(Question for the lifers - is it _really_ "almost anything"? Or is it "anything"!?)
I haven't come across anything that I couldn't send back yet...
This does not work, however, it just reloads the entire page within the list. Does anyone have any other ideas or sugestions. I realize that I am probably implementing the above code wrong, but I have tried every way that I can think of. Thanks,
What does your link_to_remote look like? It should just update the 'refresh_me' div with the result of the partial 'my_partial'.
Also, if you want to delete an item, another idea would be to assign each item it's own id. Say
<div id='my_item_123'>This is item 123</div> ...
Then in your delete action (or link to method for that action in a callback on success) use an event to simply remove that element from the page. Then nothing has to update, and the item simply goes away after deleting it.
-philip
