Question

I have a button that should open up a popup but instead reloads the page. I use link_to which works, but the button_to doesn’t. Changing the button_to to a GET request doesn’t work. How do I force it?

<%= button_to "Invite your friends", :id => "invite_fb_friends" %>
<div id="fb-root">
  <script src="http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js"></script>
  <script>
      $(function(){
      $("a#invite_fb_friends").click(function(event) {
        FB.init({
        appId:'255295947482349',
        cookie:false,
        status:true
      });
        FB.ui({
        method: 'apprequests',
        message: 'This is a test message.'});
        event.preventDefault();
        return false;
      });
     });
  </script>
</div>

Resulting HTML:

#For the button

<form method="post" action="/profile?id=invite_fb_friends" class="button_to">
<div><input type="submit" value="Invite your friends" />
<input name="authenticity_token" type="hidden" value="1bgr+0o9j/gs4sgD7hItkc3BFR1ewVh5VyXCZRoMrtY=" />
</div></form>

#For the link
<div id="friends">
<p><a href="#" id="invite_fb_friends">invite your friends</a></p>

Answer 1

button_to generates a form with a submit button that posts the form.
Maybe you should try link_to or just regular markup:

<input type="button" value="Invite your friends" id="invite_fb_friends" />