Question

I’m having a little trouble using jQuery in Rails.

I’d like to call the destroy method for a specific list item and then remove it from the list via ajax. My code is pretty simple:

# _web_profile.html.erb - The partial containing the link to destroy:
<%= link_to 'Remove', web_profile, :method => :delete, :class => 'remove_button' %>

# The ajax hijacking
$('.remove_button').live('click', function() {
  $.ajax({ type: 'delete', url:  this.href });
  return false;
});

# In my controller
format.js { render(:update) { |page| page.remove "web_profile_#{id}" } }

Ok, basicly that’s it. When I press my button everthing works fine, but instead of executing the script I’m getting it a text output in the browser:

# Browser output
try {
  jQuery("#web_profile_12").remove();
} catch (e) { 
  alert('RJS error:\n\n' + e.toString()); 
  alert('jQuery(\"#web_profile_12\").remove();'); throw e 
}

Any idea why this nice javascript code isn’t executed? I tried to add dataType to the ajax request already.

Thanks and best regards,
Joe

Answer 1

Why “type” is set to “delete”? It should be set to “POST” and dataType to “script”. Because of cross browser compatibility isssues, a workaround should be used to specify action as the RESTful delete. The data should have “_method” parameter set to “delete”.

I suggest to install jrails and use link_to_remote and other Rails helpers. They generate correct JS code. So you can learn how to build correct Rails Ajax requests.