Question

We used to have a form in our Rails 2.3.5 application as below which worked perfectly

<% form_for @quote do |f| -%>
    <%= f.text_field :length %>
    <%= f.text_field :tax, :readonly => true %>
    <%= submit_to_remote 'commit', 'Calculate', :url => { :action => 'create' } %>
    <%= submit_tag 'Submit' %>  
<% end %>

Basically the ‘Calculate’ button would submit the form as a XMLHttpRequest request while the ‘Submit’ button would do a simple POST. Is it possible to do this in a Rails 3 application?

Answer 1

Add :remote => true to your form_for options to generate a form with data-remote="true", which Rail’s Unobtrusive JavaScript will submit via AJAX.

<% form_for @quote, :remote => true do |f| %>
    <%= f.text_field :length %>
    <%= f.text_field :tax, :readonly => true %>
    <%= submit_tag 'Submit' %>  
<% end %>

The form will be submitted via AJAX if JavaScript is available, and fallback to a regular form post-back otherwise.