Question

I’m using Boxy.js to call my /signup page into a modal window. I suppose it’s Ajax. I want the page to not render with layout when it’s being called this way.

I tried:

layout proc {|controller| controller.request.xhr? ? false: "application" }

and:

def render(*args)
    args.first[:layout] = false if request.xhr? and args.first[:layout].nil?
    super
  end

in application controller, snippets I googled but they don’t work. /signup is still coming up with the layout.

Here’s part of the headers when /signup is called by Boxy:

Request URL:http://localhost:3000/signup?_=1301708866195

Request Method:GET

X-Requested-With:XMLHttpRequest

Answer 1

Best practice is to use Rails’ js response, like so:

respond_to do |format|
  format.html
  format.js { render :action_name, :layout => false }
end

But because jQuery won’t send the proper XHR headers by default, you’ll need to add something like this to your application.js:

$.ajaxSetup({
  headers : {
    'Accept' : 'text/javascript',
    'X-Requested-With' : 'XMLHttpRequest'
  }
});

If you’d rather just use something quick and dirty, try this:

respond_to do |format|
  format.html { render :layout => false if request.xhr? }
end