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RailsEdge – Chicago

Geoff and I will be attending RailsEdge in Chicago this weekend. If you see us there be sure to ask Geoff about his jQuery for Rails plugin that he has developed and that we’ve been using for the past couple of months in a number of projects.

Integrating jQuery and Rails: use unobtrusive Javascript instead of view helpers

The jQuery Way to apply behavior to a document is to add it unobtrusively via the $(document).ready() function, ideally in an external script file… unlike the Rails Way, which is to add behavior to individual elements via inline Javascript, using the built-in view helpers.

The markup generated by these helpers is obtrusive, and often repetitive. For example, using the built-in link_to_remote helper like this:

…generates this HTML:

… which is obtrusive, non-degradable and non-DRY. [Read more →]

JQuery Ajax + Rails

UPDATE
Old stuff here! See Errtheblog’s post on jQuery for more up-to-date information…

***

I’ve been working on integrating jQuery’s Ajax capabilities into a Ruby on Rails application; here’s what I’ve discovered so far:

RJS templates (yes, you can use them!)

UPDATE see Javascript + embedded Ruby templates with Rails, out-of-the-box for a way to skip using RJS templates altogether and write .js.erb templates (Edge Rails only.)

After playing around a bit with various options (like rendering Javascript from a standard .rhtml partial) I was surprised to discover that I could use RJS templates to write jQuery-specific Javascript.

Given that the Prototype syntax for element proxies — $(id) — is the same syntax as the jQuery object — $(selector) — the RJS element proxy syntax — page['someid'] — can be used to output a jQuery object. Built-in method_missing magic handles the arbitrary methods chained to it. Examples:

[Read more →]