link_to :post => true, w/ hidden extra params

rubyonrails-talk
1

Does anyone know if it's possible to generate a link_to with :post => true and have extra params that do *not* appear in the url but still get passed to the controller. i.e.

link_to { :controller => 'things', :action => 'update', :id => @thing, :translucency => 42 }, :post => true

generates a post to the url

/things/update/1?translucency=42

Looking at the source, I can see where rails is generating the imaginary form (f) with javascript

var f = document.createElement('form'); this.parentNode.appendChild(f); f.method = 'POST'; f.action = this.href; f.submit();

It doesn't seem far fetched (to me) for Rails to be able to keep going and add an element to that form with something like...

h = document.createElement('input'); h.type = 'hidden'; h.name = 'translucency', h.value = 42; f.appendChild(h)

so that the url would simply become...

/things/update/1

I know that I could just create the form myself, but that's not as fun as having Rails do all the work for me. :wink:

2

Jon Garvin wrote:

Does anyone know if it's possible to generate a link_to with :post => true and have extra params that do *not* appear in the url but still get passed to the controller. i.e.

link_to { :controller => 'things', :action => 'update', :id => @thing, :translucency => 42 }, :post => true

Actually, that was supposed to be...

link_to { :controller => 'things', :action => 'update', :id => @thing, 'thing[translucency]' => 42 }, :post => true

3

Jon Garvin wrote:

Does anyone know if it's possible to generate a link_to with :post => true and have extra params that do *not* appear in the url but still get passed to the controller. i.e.

You could write a custom helper to generate the javascript you need, or even better just use a redirect after your state changing action. You might be interested in the PRG pattern:

zsombor