Question

Can I use jquery to initiate a full page request instead of an asynchronous request?

I’m implementing a countdown timer for a testing app. I want the timing to persist through page requests, so I’m tracking the time server-side rather than in the browser. I have a jquery script poll an action every second to check the time and render the time remaining to an html element. My code:

View:

<div id='timer'></div>

application.js:

setInterval(function(){
  $('#timer').load('/exams/time');
}, 1000);

Controller:

  def time
    time = check_time
    if time 
      render :text => time
    else
      stop_exam
    end
  end  

  def stop_exam
    @exam = Exam.find(session[:exam])
    @exam.stop
    reset_session
    redirect_to @exam
  end

The countdown works fine. However, after the redirect, @exam writes to rather than the replacing the whole page. Presumably it is treating the redirect as an AJAX request rather than a full page request.

How can I modify stop_exam to replace the full page (including the javascript so it stops polling?)

Answer 1

You could return a script that when loaded into the div will redirect. I don’t know ruby syntax but return something like this:

<script type='text/javascript'>
   document.location='http://www.google.com';
</script>