Should I be putting html input tags in my view?

Question

I'm new to rails, and was wondering if I should be putting code like the second line inside my view:

<%= text_field_tag 'new_ingredient' %>
<input type=button ID="btnAddIngredient" Value="Add" onclick="addIngredient();" />

or is there a helper I should be using to generate the tag instead? I know about the form and tag helpers, but I don't want this particular button to be a form submission button. It's just a button that manipulates some items via javascript.

I'm guessing I should be using a helper, but I'm still trying to get familiar with the Rails API documentation and can't seem to find what I am looking for.

Answer 1

you can use button_to_function, like this

button_to_function "Add", :id => "btnAddIngredient", :onclick => "addIngredient();"

hope it helps =)

more details here: http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionView/Helpers/JavaScriptHelper.html#M001757

Answer 2

Depending on your approach, it may also be worth noting that putting JS function calls into on-click events is considered bad-form and will be on its way out in Rails 3, I believe. Depending on your JS framework, its better to listen for the click event on the button and act on that.

Running with jQuery, you could do something like this in the view:

<%= button_to "Add", :url => "#", :id => "btnAddIngredient" %>

And this in your application.js or other JS file:

$("#btnAddIngredient").click(function() {
    addIngredient();
});