Question

I have a CRUD application set up in Ruby on Rails 3 – its working as is. I need to add some ajax here. My first requirement is to retrieve a customised form when clicking on a New Form link. This is the link I have at this point:

<%= link_to 'New Book', new_book_path(:subject_id=>@subject.id), :remote=>true %>

For my controller I’ve made the following adjustment to the new book action:

def new
    @book = Book.new
    if params[:subject_id].to_i >0 then
      @book.subject_id = params[:subject_id]
    end

    if request.xhr?
      respond_to do |format|
        format.html # new.html.erb
        format.json { render json: @book }
        render :layout => false, :file=>'app/views/books/_form'
        return false
      end
    else
      respond_to do |format|
        format.html # new.html.erb
        format.json { render json: @book }
      end
    end
  end

I checked in firebug and clicking on the link generated returns the form html however I have no idea how to handle the response? Please do help.

Answer 1

Instead of responding with HTML respond with .js

Inside your .js.erb file could be something like this

$("#idname").append(<%= render "form" %>)

That way it renders and returns the form HTML but also gives the js code to append the HTML.