Rails - Mar 2006 - AJAX in conjunction with partials

All,

Trying to clear up some confusion on my part.

If I make an Ajax call using Ajax.Request and in the controller method 
that I call, I do a render (:partial => ''whatever.rhtml''),
should I
expect that ''whatever.rhtml'' will be rendered in the browser
or not?

Put another way, is it in any way reasonable for me to think that
Ajax.Request + partial render of "myDiv" in the Ajax controller target
is
equivalent to Ajax.Updater(''myDiv'', ...)

If not, why not?

Does the Ajax.Request call just "throw away" the response?

Thanks for any help,
Wes Gamble

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

On Mar 20, 2006, at 7:49, Wes Gamble wrote:
> All,
>
> Trying to clear up some confusion on my part.
>
> If I make an Ajax call using Ajax.Request and in the controller method
> that I call, I do a render (:partial =>
''whatever.rhtml''), should I
> expect that ''whatever.rhtml'' will be rendered in the
browser or not?
>
> Put another way, is it in any way reasonable for me to think that
> Ajax.Request + partial render of "myDiv" in the Ajax controller
target
> is
> equivalent to Ajax.Updater(''myDiv'', ...)
"Partials" are a mean to build views in the server, they do not use  
layouts, they follow some name conventions, etc., but they ultimately  
generate the same content regular RHTML templates do.

You could implement Ajax stuff calling an action that renders a  
regular RHTML template with :layout => false. No difference from the  
user''s perspective.

Now for the Javascript, Ajax.Request does not update anything per se,  
unless you do something by hand in the callbacks:

     http://wiki.script.aculo.us/scriptaculous/show/Ajax.Request

It just issues a call to the server.

Additionally, one rarely writes those Javascript snippets by hand,  
they are normally generated by helpers in Rails.

-- fxn