Question

I know this isn’t valid code, but is there a way to do something like this in Rails?:

render "$('#dialog').replaceWith(#{render :action => 'new.html.erb'});"

What I’m trying to do basically is replace the contents of a JS dialog with what is/would be returned from calling render 'new.html.erb'.

Edit for @Devin M:

controller action:

def new
  @act = Act.new(:user_id => current_user.id)
end

def create
  @act = Act.new(params[:act])
  if @act.valid?
    @act.save
  else
    render :action => :new
  end
end

new.js.erb:

$('#dialog').replaceWith("<%= escape_javascript(render(:action => 'new.html.erb')) %>");

Full error:

Showing app/views/acts/new.js.erb where line #1 raised: undefined method `formats' for nil:NilClass

Answer 1

You should split this code out into a seperate view since including it in the controller would go against the ideas of MVC. I would update the controller to respond to JS requests using some code like this in the action I wanted to modify:

  respond_to do |format|  
    format.html { redirect_to @item }  
    format.js  
  end

And create a view like this with the extenstion .js.erb:

$('#dialog').replaceWith("<%= escape_javascript(render :partial => "new.html.erb", :locals => { :act => @act }) %>");

You can then trigger this JS with a remote link to the action or by adding your own UJS.