Rails - Jul 2006 - Help with first AJAX action

I''ve used Rails for a while, but haven''t really done any AJAX
until
now. Now I''ve been fighting for days with my first AJAX action and  
after reliably crashing Safari and throwing errors in IE, I''m finally  
coming to the list for help. :)

I have a "controls" div in my layout. This div displays a list of  
page-specific actions. When some of these actions are clicked (I.e.  
edit/add) the controls div is replaced by the form that performs the  
action. When the action is submitted, the controls div reverts to the  
list of available actions and the page is updated to reflect the  
change via an RJS template.

So, as a concrete example, I have a list_colors action with a link to  
"Add color", which links to an edit_color action. The action looks  
like this:

	def edit_color
		@color = Color.find_by_id(params[:id]) || Color.new
		if request.post? and params[:color]
			@color.attributes = params[:color]
			if @color.save
			return redirect_to :action => "edited_color", :color =>
@color
			end
		end
		return render :template => "storefront/edit_color", :layout =>
false
	end


	def edited_color
		@color = Color.find(params["color"].to_i)
		render :template => "storefront/edited_color"
	end


Here is the RJS:


page.insert_html :bottom, "colors", :partial =>
"list_color", :locals
=> {:color => @color}
page.visual_effect :highlight, "colors"
page.replace_html "controls", render_controls

When the user clicks on "Add color" in the controls div, which  
initially displays "Add color" and "Log out," these links
are
replaced by the edit_color form. When the user successfully adds the  
new color, the RJS template should insert the list_color partial into  
the colors table, which renders a <tr> containing the new color data.  
It should also highlight the entire table, then call the  
render_controls helper which replaces the form in the controls div  
with "Add color" and "Log out" once again.

Initially, this action called edited_color instead of redirecting to  
it. Is this a better way for some reason? Ideally I''d like to do away  
with actions that serve no purpose other than rendering a template.  
I''m just not clear on what the best way to accomplish this should be,  
so while I could (and probably have) tried many permutations, it all  
seems silly until I know how to go about this, and quite a few of the  
actions I''ve seen in tutorials and such aren''t using this DRY
postback style. Or should I replace the action entirely with a simple  
call to render edited_color?

When I run this action, Safari crashes when edited_color is rendered  
if  the replace_html statement with the list_color partial is  
uncommented. If either or both of the other statements are  
uncommented, the javascript that should be rendered is dumped into  
the view, but is rendered as code and not run (I.e. I get the  
Effect.Highlight and Element.update calls, and the links which  
Element.update should render are displayed as links, but inline wih  
the javascript. The code isn''t streamed or evaluated by the browser.  
And, yes, I am including all the javascripts in my layout.

Oh, and yes, the new color is successfully created, and looking in  
the logs shows that the correct color is being pulled from the  
database when the list_color partial is rendered. What additional  
information can I provide?

Thanks in advance. This one has been baffling me and I don''t know  
what else to try.