Question

I have a Ruby method nested inside a jQuery onclick event and I want the method to execute when the div is clicked. This works; however, the method is also executing on page refresh. Why does it also execute on page refresh and is there any way to limit it to only onclick?

 $(function() { 
   $('.myDiv').click(function(){
      <% foo_bar %>
   });
 });

Answer 1

I don’t see how foo_bar can be executed when you click on the div. Ruby is executed server side, jQuery is executed client side. You cannot execute ruby code from your client.
Your foo_bar is executed on refresh page because the server need to interpret it to give it’s result into the <% %> tag. However, when you click on the div, nothing will happen because the jquery function will be empty (since you did not write <%= %>). Even if you wrote <%= %>, the jQuery would only execute the foo_bar result, not the function itself.

Maybe you could explain what you want to do in your foo_bar. If you want interact with the server, you will need something like Ajax.