Rails - Mar 2006 - Rails AJAX question, calling remote_function in a loop

I think I may be missing something here.  I have a collection of people 
I want to run through.  For each person I want to use AJAX to make a 
calculation and update the page with the results.  First I tried to do 
this with just links, which works fine.  It looks like this

<% @eligible_players.each do |player| %>
<tr>
<td>
<%= link_to_remote( player.player_name,
                         :update => "playerList" + player.id.to_s,
                         :url =>{ :action => 
:calc_wins_losses_for_player, :id => player.id },
                         :position => "top",
                         :complete => visual_effect(:highlight, 
"playerList" + player.id.to_s, :duration => 1) ) %>
</td>
<td id=<%= "\"playerList" + player.id.to_s +
"\"" %>"></td>
</tr>
<% end %>
So you have the list on the left, and when you click on a player''s name
it runs the calculation and updates the page correctly.

Now my question is this, how can I do this so that the user does not 
have to click on the names in order to make that call.  I was looking at 
the JS reference in the rails API, and it seemed like remote_function is 
the way to go.  I tried the following

<% @eligible_players.each do |player| %>
<tr>
<td>
<%= remote_function(
                         :update => "playerList" + player.id.to_s,
                         :url =>{ :action => 
:calc_wins_losses_for_player, :id => player.id },
                         :position => "top",
                         :complete => visual_effect(:highlight, 
"playerList" + player.id.to_s, :duration => 1) ) %>
</td>
<td id=<%= "\"playerList" + player.id.to_s +
"\"" %>"></td>
</tr>
<% end %>

but this did not work.  Just as a test I tried the 
periodically_call_remote, but that obviously does not really work 
correctly in this case, because it can call the same thing more than 
once per person.

What am I missing here?

Thanks in advance,
Gabe

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

Actually I guess I am missing the point that client should not be 
dictating when the processing is done necessarily.  So outside of that, 
is what I posted above possible?

Gabe

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