Question

Here’s what I’m trying to do.

when the user clicks new note.. I want the user to be taken to a page when they can start typing a note, and save it to the server all with AJAX..

Problem is, every time the page saves, it’s making a new note.

This leads me to believe that when Rails gets the DEF NEW controller, some how I need rails to first make a NEW NOTE record and then redirect to the edit controller of that new note, where the user can create/edit the note all with AJAX.

Thoughts? Thanks.

Answer 1

If you really want use to use #new to create a note and save it, then you can simply do

def new
  @note = Note.create # instead of Note.new
end

Rails will then display this note just like the #edit action, so the note id will be in a hidden field. Then when you send the Ajax calls, you’ll be calling #edit. If you want to preserve the behavior of #new for when javascript is turned off, then you might want to create a different action.

def new
  @note = Note.new
end

def new_js
  @note = Note.create
end

When you load the page that has the link to new_note, include some javascript that changes the link to new_js_note. So when JS is off, you get the standard #new form. When JS is on, you get a form that is basically editing a preexisting blank note.