Question

I would like to automatically save a form when the user selects a date (or makes any change for that matter, whether it be date or time) from the datepicker popup. In rails I’m using a form with :remote => true to simply change a due date attribute. It’s just one field, so it feels like overkill to make users click a ‘submit’ button after picking a date. I currently have it set up to display the updated date using AJAX once the user updates the form, but again, I’d like this done w/o actually clicking a submit button.

Here’s my erb:

<%= form_for todo, :remote => true, :url => update_todo_project_path, :html => {:id => "todo#{todo.id}" } do |f| %>
   <%= f.hidden_field :id %>
   <%= f.text_field :due %>
   <%= f.submit %>
<% end %>

Javascript (just an external js file):

$('input#project_todo_due').datetimepicker({
    dateFormat: 'yy-mm-dd',
    timeFormat: 'hh:mm'
});

And update_todo.js.erb:

$("#dueon<%= @todo.id%>").html("<%= raw escape_javascript(render(:partial => 'duedate')) %>");

Answer 1

I’m going to take a stab at it:

$('input#project_todo_due').datetimepicker({
  dateFormat: 'yy-mm-dd',
  timeFormat: 'hh:mm',
  onClose: function(strDate, datepicker) {
    // According to the docs this situation occurs when 
    // the dialog closes without the user making a selection
    if(strDate == "") {
      return;
    }

    // According to the docs this refers to the input
    // Some digging in jquery-ujs on github make it
    // look like triggering the 'submit.rails' event
    // on the form will cause the normal unobtrusive
    // js helpers to post the form.
    // What's not clear is if the input element has the
    // updated value at this point.
    $(this).parent().trigger('submit.rails')
  }
});

The docs I used:

jQuery UI Datepicker — onClose

jquery-ujs on Github — relevant lines begin at 362