Rails - Jul 2006 - Best way of storing and recalling data for display?

I want to store a number of snippets of html representing messages,  
and display them in response to user events.

I''m currently storing them in a javascript array at page-load time,  
then display individual snippets using Element.update().   The  
message array can get extra messages added to it following an ajax  
call.  The set up looks something like this:

<script type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8">
<% @messages.each do |msg|
	html_insert = escape_javascript(
		"<span
class=\"messageType\">#{msg.message_type}</span>
		 <span class=\"messageFieldLabel\">From:</span><span
class=
\"messageField\">#{h msg.from}</span>
		 <span
class=\"messageFieldLabel\">Subject:</span><span class=
\"messageField\"><strong>#{h
msg.subject}</strong></span>
		 <span class=\"messageFieldLabel\">Date:</span><span
class=
\"messageField\">#{h msg.sent_at}</span>
		 <span>#{(h msg.body).gsub(/\n/,
"<br/>")}</span>''")
%>
AppController.addMessage(<%=msg.id%>,"<%=html_insert%>");
//store the
message for later retrieval
<% end %>
</script>



...which works, but it just feels so...unpleasant.  Embedding this  
big javascript stringy mess in the page source, all those escape  
characters...  there must be a cleaner way of doing this.  Any  
suggestions?

I''m sure there was a blog posting recently about embedding stuff like  
this within a .js file generated by erb (rather than the static .js  
in /public/javascripts) - but I can''t find it now.  Any suggestions  
what that might have been?

Jon
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