Rails spinoffs - Apr 2006 - Form.Serialize - Method''s for limiting form data?

I have some ideas how to go about this, but wanted to see if people 
already had solutions in place for this.

The basic scenario is i''m sending form data over ajax using 
form.serialize to send the form data (as per the standard methodology). 
However, on some pages i have very large forms (few thousand form fields 
- its a simulated editable grid), and I only want to send the data in 
the form fields that the user has changed.

Are there any built in functions to specify filter rules to 
form.serialize?

My initial approach is to have a 2nd empty form tag on the page, and 
whenever the user changes a form field it will call a function that will 
dynamically create a new hidden form element in the 2nd form and write 
the attribute name and value into the hidden field. Then serialize this 
2nd hidden ''data'' form.

That seems like it would work ok, but i was wondering if other people 
had more elegant solutions already?

-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

On 4/17/06, Erin Brewer <erin-A+eRycXGxsFBDgjK7y7TUQ@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
> My initial approach is to have a 2nd empty form tag on the page, and
> whenever the user changes a form field it will call a function that will
> dynamically create a new hidden form element in the 2nd form and write
> the attribute name and value into the hidden field. Then serialize this
> 2nd hidden ''data'' form.
Performancewise, this should be the best thing. You could refine it to
hold the data in an Object and then convert the Object to a string and
transfer this string. Saves you hitting the DOM. You could also
compare .value to .defaultValue of a input field and remove the field
from the holding Object, if the user reverts the data to the initial
value.

Bye,
  Martin