Question

I’d like to call a method in my controller when a user leaves a page. Ideally I’d also like to pass in a couple of parameters.

This is what I’ve got. Not sure if I’m handing the parameter properly and my leave method is never called.

In ‘show.html.erb’

<script language="javascript"> 
    $(window).bind('beforeunload', function() {
    $.get('/leave?foo='+<%= @bar %>, null, null, null)
    });
</script>

In ‘routes.rb’

match '/leave' to: 'posts#leave'

In ‘posts_controller.rb’

def leave
  puts params[:bar]
end

Note: putting a link_to directly to /leave works fine and replace the jQuery $.get with return true; throws a dialog when the user tries to leave.

Answer 1

I solved this using unobstrusive JS. In one of my Coffeescript files I put:

jQuery ->
  $(window).on('beforeunload', ->
    $.get('/leave?foo=bar', null)
    return "Bye!")

I’d like to do this without the alert, but unless I return something, GET doesn’t work. Weird, but it’s a separate question.

Thanks for your help, Mark.