I am getting confused about the relationship between respond_to/format.js and an xhr request. Would appreciate any advice, tips on how this has changed in different Rails versions if it has, etc. In particular, I am confused as to why an xhr request sometimes will trigger format.js, even though it''s not actually a request to format=>js, but other times won''t. And if I want to take some special action in response to xhr requests, is it best practice to check request.xhr?, or to use format.js? I am adding some unobtrusive JQuery JS of my own (not using the Rails helpers), which submit to the same controller actions as the ordinary HTML actions. But when a request is received from an xhr, the controller should do something different -- for instance, not do a redirect, or return just a partial instead of the full HTML (the JQuery will grab the partial and insert it into the page itself). What is the best practice for having a controller action recognize an xhr request, and respond differently? In some sample code on the net, I see "format.js". Which confuses me a bit, because the JS code isn''t actually making a .js request, it''s still requesting .html -- but sometimes format.js seems to match it _anyway_, and I don''t know why. Other times it does not. I can not predict it. Or, I can actually manually test for "if request.xhr" and just "render" what I want manually if so, if not do the whole respond_to thing. But that gets a bit odd too. Are there best practices for this stuff? For having a controller action that responds differently to an xhr request from JS than to an ordinary browser HTML request? When I google around, people seem all over the place on this, it seems to have changed a lot in different rails versions, etc. Any advice appreciated. -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby on Rails: Talk" group. To post to this group, send email to rubyonrails-talk-/JYPxA39Uh5TLH3MbocFF+G/Ez6ZCGd0@public.gmane.org To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rubyonrails-talk+unsubscribe-/JYPxA39Uh5TLH3MbocFF+G/Ez6ZCGd0@public.gmane.org For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk?hl=en.