Rails 3.1: Calling a template via JavaScript

I was just going through this

old rails cast episode, and one thing it mentions is the (now obsolete, apparently) link_to_function code. One interesting snippet it mentions is

 link_to_function "Add a Task" do |page|
    page.insert_html :bottom, :tasks, :partial => 'task', :object => Task.new
  end

In short, clicking the "Add a Task" link appends the "task" partial to the page without ajax.

I'm familiar with how to do this in Rails 3/3.1 via AJAX and/or manual javascript, but how do you pull in a template partial on the fly without touching ajax?

Solution

It just simply stores the html content within the javascript code, which it's rendered while the page is rendered. So when you click "Add a task" the partial is already there escaped in the javascript code of the add task action. Just take a look to the content of the page with firebug.

Also the docs shows that the instert_html looks like this for prototype:

def insert_html(position, id, *options_for_render)
  content = javascript_object_for(render(*options_for_render))
  record "Element.insert(\"#{id}\", { #{position.to_s.downcase}: #{content} });"
end

So you can see that the content is actually the task partial, and it's inserted into javascript code. Also i have to mention that this is an obtrusive way to use javascript.

Take a look at the docs.