Submit form in rails 3 in an ajax way (with jQuery)

katie picture katie · Jul 17, 2011 · Viewed 81.8k times · Source

I am a beginner in rails and jQuery. I have two separate forms in one page and I want to submit them separately in ajax way (with jQuery). This is how far I got. Can anybody add or fix this code to make it work. I am using Rails 3.1 and jQuery 1.6. Thank you in advance.

application.js

$(".savebutton").click(function() { 
    $('form').submit(function() {
         $(this).serialize();
    });
}); 

first form:

<%=form_for :users do |f| %>
  <fieldset>
    <legend>Basic details</legend>
    <%= f.label :school %>
    <%= f.text_field :school,:size=>"45",:class=>"round",:id=>"school" %><br/>      
  </fieldset>
  <p><%= button_to "save and continue",{:class=>"savebutton"} %></p>
<%end%>

second form:

<%=form_for :courses do |c| %>
  <fieldset>
    <legend>Your current classes</legend>
    <label>class:</label><%= c.text_field :subject,:size=>"45",:class=>"round" %><br/>
  </fieldset>
  <p><%= button_to "save and continue",{:class=>"savebutton"} %></p>
<%end%>

SchoolController

class SchoolController < ApplicationController
  respond_to :json
  def create
    @school = current_user.posts.build(params[:school].merge(:user => current_user))
    if @school.save
      respond_with @school
    else
      respond_with @school.errors, :status => :unprocessable_entity
    end
  end
end

CourseController is in the same shape as SchoolController

Answer

Johan picture Johan · Jul 17, 2011

You want to:

  1. Stop the normal behaviour of submit.
  2. Send it through ajax to the server.
  3. Get a reply back and change things accordingly.

The code below should do that:

$('form').submit(function() {  
    var valuesToSubmit = $(this).serialize();
    $.ajax({
        type: "POST",
        url: $(this).attr('action'), //sumbits it to the given url of the form
        data: valuesToSubmit,
        dataType: "JSON" // you want a difference between normal and ajax-calls, and json is standard
    }).success(function(json){
        console.log("success", json);
    });
    return false; // prevents normal behaviour
});