lalalalala pqpqpqpqpq wrote in post #1069545: > Hi, I want to link the selections from a drop down menu in my view to a > controller action. Here's the code for my view: > > [code]<select> > <option><%= link_to "option A", :controller => "scriptrunner", :action > => "runoptionA" %></option> > <option><%= link_to "option B", :controller => "scriptrunner", :action > => "runoptionB" %></option> > <option><%= link_to "option C", :controller => "scriptrunner", :action > => "runoptionC" %></option> > </select> > [/code]
Are you saying you literally have written the HTML for the select control in your view template? If so then you should know that Rails provides some nice helpers for that. > Right now when I select an option from the drop down menu, nothing is > called in my controller. Of course the controller doesn't get called. HTML doesn't work that way. A request is sent to the server, the server responds with HTML (or other response types). At this point the server waits for other requests. The client will generate another request on certain actions. 1. A hyperlink is clicked or 2. A form is submitted. I think those are the only two actions that will trigger a new request, without the aid of something outside of the HTML. That might be JavaScript, Flash or other browser plugins. Changing the selection in a popup box, clicking a checkbox, etc. will not send a request to the server. These actions only modify the form data that gets POSTed back to the server when a form gets submitted. > Is there a way to add a "GO" button, so after I > select something from the menu, I can click the GO button and it will > call the corresponding action in my controller? Sure. That is called a form submission. That's what the <input type="submit"> is. However, in most cases a better way would be to use JavaScript/JQuery to bind a JavaScript function to the "change" event of the select tag. Then post the data you need back to the server asynchronously using XMLHttpRequest (A.K.A AJAX). But, only use AJAX is it's really necessary. In many cases you can pass everything you need in the initial request and then use JavaScript (without AJAX) to control your user interface. One common use that typically leads to questions like yours, is when one wants to control one popup's selection based on a another popup. Sometimes it's possible to send all the information the client needs to accomplish that in the initial request. Thus saving additional round trips to the server. Other times that's not possible, or not convenient, and it's necessary to call back to the server. The one thing I would highly recommend is to avoid triggering a page refresh based on changes to popups or checkboxes. Use JavaScript (and AJAX if necessary) to do partial updates to your page. Your users will thank you for that. It's highly annoying to have your browser window scrolled to exactly where you want it then changing a popup causes a page refresh and throws you back to top of the page. This would happen if you were do use a normal form submit ("Go") button as you mentioned. -- 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@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rubyonrails-talk+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.