Question

I’m looking for some example code on displaying validation errors in a form that is submitted via json to rails 3.1. The form is using formtastic-bootstrap, and is displayed as a JQuery dialog. The request is sent to the server as a xhr request with JSON data. The form is created with formtastic, and displayed by JQuery in a modal fashion.

It’s not obvious if I should send back the raw error messages in a JSON, or maybe the HTML in the JSON to be applied to a div that shows validation errors.

Answer 1

I would just use the jQuery ujs capabilities and return the full html.

Here is an example:

views/resources/_form.html.erb:

<%= semantic_form_for @resource, remote: true do |f| %>
  <%= f.input :title %>
  <%= f.input :description %>
  <%= f.submit %>
<% end %>

views/resources/new.html.erb:

<h1>Create a New Resource</h1>
<%= render 'form' %>

controllers/resources_controller.rb:

class ResourceController < ApplicationController
  def new
    @resource = Resource.new
  end

  def create
    @resource = Resource.new(params[:resource])
    if @resource.save
      render js: "$('.my-modal').modal('close')"
    else
      render js: "$('.my-modal #new-resource-form').replaceWith('#{j render('form')}')"
    end
  end
end