Rails 3.1: Calling a template via JavaScript

I was just going through this

old rails cast episode, and one thing it mentions is the (now obsolete, apparently) link_to_function code. One interesting snippet it mentions is

 link_to_function "Add a Task" do |page|
    page.insert_html :bottom, :tasks, :partial => 'task', :object => Task.new
  end

In short, clicking the "Add a Task" link appends the "task" partial to the page without ajax.

I'm familiar with how to do this in Rails 3/3.1 via AJAX and/or manual javascript, but how do y开发者_如何学运维ou pull in a template partial on the fly without touching ajax?

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It just simply stores the html content within the javascript code, which it's rendered while the page is rendered. So when you click "Add a task" the partial is already there escaped in the javascript code of the add task action. Just take a look to the content of the page with firebug.

Also the docs shows that the instert_html looks like this for prototype:

def insert_html(position, id, *options_for_render)
  content = javascript_object_for(render(*options_for_render))
  record "Element.insert(\"#{id}\", { #{position.to_s.downcase}: #{content} });"
end

So you can see that the content is actually the task partial, and it's inserted into javascript code. Also i have to mention that this is an obtrusive way to use javascript.

Take a look at the docs.

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I was going through the same railscast, and I figured out the reason why this is not working is because this method uses Prototype, which by default is unavailable with the Rails 3.1 .

You could get this working by installing prototype gem from:

https://github.com/rails/prototype-rails