Remotable

An unobtrusive Javascript plugin for Rails 2.3, inspired by Rails 3.0

How to use

Use form_for, link_to or 'button_to' as you normally would, passing the :remote => true option when you want the form or the link to be submitted using an XMLHttpRequest and the results of the request evaled in the context of the page.

What it does

• Overrides form_for, link_to, and button_to so that they emit HTML5-like tags with data-remote and data-method attributes instead of the current inline javascript style.

• Extends the javascript_include_tag :defaults so that it loads remotable.js which provides the javascript code that transparently takes care of firing an XMLHttpRequest for any link or form with the data-* attributes and evaluates the response in the context of the page. (jQuery 1.4 required)

What it doesn't do

• It doesn't support any of the :update => { :success => "posts", :failure => "error" } style options. You have to use RJS, or just pure javascript, in your response in order to manipulate any HTML elements on the page.

• It only accepts GET as a :method for link_to. If you need an element that looks like a link but updates or destroys a resource, the use button_to and style the button with CSS to look like a link.

Other javascript libraries

It should be trivial to write your own remotable.js and drop it in as a replacement for javascripts/remotable.js

The following gist provides a sample implementation for Prototype 1.6 and jQuery 1.3.2 (with livequery)

http://gist.github.com/279619

To-Do

• Override remote_form_for, link_to_remote, button_to_remote to use remotable

Copyright (c) 2010 Christos Zisopoulos, released under the MIT license