Question

I recently started with Rails 3.2 and am stuck while trying to implement some ajax functionality in my app. I followed this railscast completely (http://railscasts.com/episodes/240-search-sort-paginate-with-ajax). Beyond this I want to implement a shortlist button for each product which lets user shortlist products and store them in the session. I also want a small list of shortlisted products to show up on the same page, which needs to be ajax updated.

I am wondering what is the best way to do that. I currently implemented the link_to buttons with remote tag and a helper function to change the link to shortlist/unshortlist. I also, used a conditional div to show the shortlist based on the length of shortlist. However, the issue is that whenever I shortlist, the order of the products table is also reset.

Here are snippets of my code :-

Application_helper.rb

def shortlist_unshortlist_link(product_id )
  if (user_session.already_shortlisted? product_id )
    link_to 'Unshortlist', { action: 'unshortlist', id: product_id  }, remote => 'true'
  else
    link_to 'Shortlist', { action: 'shortlist', id: product_id  }, remote => 'true'
  end
end


def shortlist_div
  shortlist=user_session.shortlist
   if (user_session.shortlist.length > 0)
     render :partial => 'pages/shortlist_fields'
   end
end

products/index.html.erb

<div id="product">
 <% @products.each do |product| %>
<tr>....
<td><%= shortlist_unshortlist_link(product.id.to_s) %></td>
</table>
</div>
<div class="shortlist"><%= shortlist_div() %> </div>

products_controller.rb

def shortlist
 user_session.add_to_shortlist(params[:id])
 redirect_to products_path
end

def unshortlist
 user_session.remove_from_shortlist(params[:id])
 redirect_to products_path
end

I think, the issue is because of redirect_to, but I am not getting how to avoid this without hurting the functionality. Am I on a totally wrong path here. Is this a good way to implement this. Any suggestions.

thanks,
Amit

Answer 1

you should use in shortlist method,

respond_to do |format|
  format.html {redirect_to products_path }#shortlist.html.erb
  format.js #shortlist.js.erb
 end

and write your java script to #shortlist.js.erb file.

Do the same with unshortlist.