Rails controller method to save model and close popup window

Question

Hi there, I have a web app that allows users to edit model data via a popup window. When the popup window form is completed, the user clicks a "Save" button, the window closes, and the original page reloads to show any updates that happened to the data.

My technique only works sometimes. I can't for the life of me figure out why it works one time and why it doesn't another.

In my popup window's form, I have this as the submit method:

<%= submit_tag("Update Invoice", {:onclick=>"refreshParent()"}) %>

So the Javascript is executed ideally at the same time that the form is submitted to the controller. Here's the refreshParent() Javascript function:

function refreshParent(id) {
    window.opener.location.reload();
    window.close();
}

Now, the method called by my form ("update" in this case) doesn't have a redirect_to method call, but even when I do (say, to the original view, index) it doesn't seem to matter.

At root, it seems that my controller method doesn't fire on form submit. Sometimes. I can submit the same form data multiple times, and it'll work the third time. Or sometimes it works right away. It's totally random.

What can I do to ensure that my controller methods fire when you close a popup window?

Thanks, Aaron.

Answer 1

I would guess you're experiencing some combination of poor JavaScript performance and network latency issues. Are the requests actually showing up at the server?

Answer 2

If I'm understanding correctly, you want form on the page to post, but you also want the window that the form was on to close. Unfortunately, the way you have it set up now, there's no way to check that the form successfully posted before closing the window. So, if the window closes before the form has been posted, the request might not complete and the data will never get sent to your controller.

A better solution would be to post the form with Ajax and close the window when the Ajax request has successfully completed.

A library like jQuery makes Ajax dead simple, so there's really no reason not to use it.