AJAX partial in loop

Question

I am trying to render a partial with ajax when submitting a form. Here is my code:

index.html.erb

<% @inbox.each do |conversation| %>
  <div class="message">
     <div id="messages">
        <%= render conversation.messages %>
     </div>

     <div class="inner-message">
       <%= form_tag({controller: "conversations", action: "reply", id: conversation.id}, {remote: true, method: :post}) do %>
         <%= hidden_field_tag :recipient_id, current_user.id %>
         <%= hidden_field_tag :subject, "#{current_user.name}" %>

         <div class="form-group">
           <%= text_area_tag :body, nil, class: "form-control", placeholder: "Odgovori" %>
         </div>

         <div class="form-group">
           <%= submit_tag 'Pošlji', class: "btn btn-primary" %>
         </div>
       <% end %>
     </div>
  </div>
<% end %>

index.js.erb

$("#messages").html("<%= escape_javascript(render conversation.messages) %>")

conversations_controller.rb

def reply
  conversation = current_user.mailbox.conversations.find(params[:id])
  current_user.reply_to_conversation(conversation, params[:body])

  respond_to do |format|
     format.html { redirect_to messages_path }
     format.js { redirect_to messages_path }
  end
end

when I submit the form, I get an undefined local variable error:

ActionView::Template::Error (undefined local variable or method `conversation' for #<#:0x007fd287172fa8>)

How do I pass the local variable from the loop to the .js.erb view?

Thanks!

Answer 1

I usually don't do much rendering of js in applications so I'm a bit rusty on the specifics. However there are a couple of problems with your code.

1. First by issuing a redirect your instructing the browser to load a new url . Any variables such as 'conversation' that you would have set would be forgotten.

2. As the Stan Wiechers alluded you need to use an instance variable (e.g. @conversation) if you want to preserve conversation for the view. Unfortunately that won't help you in this case because of the redirect which wipes out all variables not stored in the session, cookies, or flash hash.

3. What I think you want to do is render your partial in stead of redirecting. Typically when you are using ajax you don't want to reload the page on the server side. In Rails you would typically render json or in your case a js partial.

Try

format.js{render partial:[PARTIAL NAME], locals:{conversation: conversation} }

This will render the partial without redirecting and will pass your local variable. If you change 'conversation', to @conversation then you can leave off the locals:{conversation: conversation} but your partial should reference

@conversation

not

conversation

hope that helps