Rails - Jan 2006 - Newbie: from the javascript way to the Rails way... Advice?

Hello;

I''m building an application for a touchscreen that pages through a set 
of survey pages. On each page, the user makes some choices by touching 
items on the screen (words, or images) and, when satisfied with their 
choices, clicks the Next page button.

Rails has done a great job helping me get things to the screen, and 
paginating for me... but I''m stuck on something that I''ve
implemented
before in plain old javascript:

When a user touches an item, in the old days I would simply write a 
string to the end of the window.location.href:

function addThisToo(key, value)
{
 window.location.href += "&" + key + "=" + value
}

and, at some point later on, submit this, and there you go...

My experience with Rails, so far, has been that there are remarkably 
sensible solutions for many of web work''s little problems... is there a
Rails solution for this one? (My preference is for a non-AJAX solution 
at this point...)

thanks to all

-Bill

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

Bill Spornitz wrote:
> Hello;
> 
> I''m building an application for a touchscreen that pages through a
set
> of survey pages. On each page, the user makes some choices by touching 
> items on the screen (words, or images) and, when satisfied with their 
> choices, clicks the Next page button.
> 
> Rails has done a great job helping me get things to the screen, and 
> paginating for me... but I''m stuck on something that I''ve
implemented
> before in plain old javascript:
> 
> When a user touches an item, in the old days I would simply write a 
> string to the end of the window.location.href:
> 
> function addThisToo(key, value)
> {
>  window.location.href += "&" + key + "=" + value
> }
> 
> and, at some point later on, submit this, and there you go...
> 
> My experience with Rails, so far, has been that there are remarkably 
> sensible solutions for many of web work''s little problems... is
there a
> Rails solution for this one? (My preference is for a non-AJAX solution 
> at this point...)
> 
> thanks to all
> 
> -Bill
You can add custom parameters to links like this..

link_to "Do Not Push!", {:controller=>''world'',
:action=>''rotation'',
:speed=>"stop"}, :post=>true, :confirm=>"Are you sure?
There is no
Undo!"

This will map to

http://www.armageddon.com/world/rotation/?speed=stop

or something similar.

_Kevin

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

On 1/20/06, Kevin Olbrich <kevin.olbrich@duke.edu>
wrote:
> Bill Spornitz wrote:
> > Hello;
> >
> > I''m building an application for a touchscreen that pages
through a set
> > of survey pages. On each page, the user makes some choices by touching
> > items on the screen (words, or images) and, when satisfied with their
> > choices, clicks the Next page button.
> >
> > Rails has done a great job helping me get things to the screen, and
> > paginating for me... but I''m stuck on something that
I''ve implemented
> > before in plain old javascript:
> >
> > When a user touches an item, in the old days I would simply write a
> > string to the end of the window.location.href:
> >
> > function addThisToo(key, value)
> > {
> >  window.location.href += "&" + key + "=" +
value
> > }
> >
> > and, at some point later on, submit this, and there you go...
> >
> > My experience with Rails, so far, has been that there are remarkably
> > sensible solutions for many of web work''s little problems...
is there a
> > Rails solution for this one? (My preference is for a non-AJAX solution
> > at this point...)
> >
> > thanks to all
> >
> > -Bill
>
> You can add custom parameters to links like this..
>
> link_to "Do Not Push!",
{:controller=>''world'',
:action=>''rotation'',
> :speed=>"stop"}, :post=>true, :confirm=>"Are you
sure? There is no
> Undo!"
>
> This will map to
>
> http://www.armageddon.com/world/rotation/?speed=stop
>
> or something similar.
>
In addition to this (good) suggestion, you can use named routes and
routing variables to make this cleaner.
http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/NamedRoutes
The above would then be:
link_to "Do Not Push", stop_button_url(:speed =>
''stop'', :post =>
true, :confirm => "Are you sure?")
..which lets you omit the :action and :controller options.

Thank you for these excellent responses!

The main hurdle, as I see it, is that I need the browser to append stuff 
to the url at the client end; as I understand it, the link_to function 
creates a <a href> tag in the html document, but I need to append to the 
url in this <a href> tag, based on user interaction, at the browser. The 
actual string appended is based on which selections the user makes. Am I 
seeing this incorrectly? Will link_to accomodate this?

Thanks again!

-Bill

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

Bill Spornitz wrote:
> Thank you for these excellent responses!
> 
> The main hurdle, as I see it, is that I need the browser to append stuff 
> to the url at the client end; as I understand it, the link_to function 
> creates a <a href> tag in the html document, but I need to append to
the
> url in this <a href> tag, based on user interaction, at the browser.
The
> actual string appended is based on which selections the user makes. Am I 
> seeing this incorrectly? Will link_to accomodate this?
> 
> Thanks again!
> 
> -Bill
The link_to will fix the link at render time.  AJAX would be an easy way 
to do what you want, just have it observe the fields the user can change 
and have it update the link as needed.

_Kevin

-- 
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