RJS method outputting raw javascript

I've got a page where I'm dynamically adding elements to a from a series of select boxes. I'm using RJS to do this and it's working great. Now, these elements in the div are a series of that are accompanied by Delete buttons, in case the user wants to remove a textarea. Here's where I'm hitting a wall.

Here's the code that runs the Delete button. This is working well to my knowledge:

<%= link_to image_tag("/images/button_delete.gif", :alt=>"Delete"), :controller=>"report", :action=>"remove", :id=>@sentence.id %>

In my report controller, I've got this very simple method being called by the above code:

def remove @sentence_id = params[:id] end

Again, I think that's working. Now, when I activate this action by hitting the button, off we go to the RJS file, remove.rjs:

page.remove 'sentence_'+@sentence_id

And here's what I get in my browser, instead of a happily removed element!

try 
{
     Element.remove("sentence_63");
} 
catch (e) 
{ 
     alert('RJS error:\n\n' + e.toString()); 
     alert('Element.remove(\"sentence_63\");'); 
     throw e; 
}

My understanding is that this happens when there's no page in the current context. Online documentation on this is kind of thin.

Any help appreciated! Cheers, Aaron.

Solution

Since your remove function doesn't seem to actually delete a record, if you just want to remove an HTML element from a page you can use link_to_function with the Prototype remove() method for Elements. In addition, if you've got a recent version of Rails (for example, 2.3.2) you can take advantage of the dom_id helper to auto generate the sentance_id ID attribute

<%= link_to_function(image_tag("button_delete.gif", :alt=>"Delete"), "$('#{dom_id(@sentence}').remove();" %>

An approach like this could help keep the number of methods down in your controller (unless you intend on doing something else in the controller)