Status of Rails' link_to_function deprecation?

Question

What is the status of the link_to_function Javascript helper in Rails? I read, including in this stackoverflow question, that it was deprecated in Rails 3.0, then undeprecated, then deprecated again in 3.2.4. Is it something I can depend on and teach students? I just read the release notes (from a search) for Rails 3.2.8:

Reverted the deprecation of button_to_function and link_to_function helpers. Rafael Mendonça França

Where does this stand now?

Answer 1

link_to_function is NOT deprecated in 3-2-stable branch and it won't be deprecated in 3-2-stable in future. But it IS depreacated in current master branch and will be deprecated in Rails 4.0 when it releases. So I guess it will removed from rails code in 4.1. So you can teach students to do this (from the rails 4 changelog):

We recommend the use of Unobtrusive JavaScript instead. For example:

link_to "Greeting", "#", class: "nav_link"

$(function() {
  $('.nav_link').click(function() {
    // Some complex code

    return false;
  });
});

or

link_to "Greeting", '#', onclick: "alert('Hello world!'); return false", class: "nav_link"