I have a FooController that responds to HTML and JS (AJAX) queries:
# app/controllers/foo_controller.rb:
class FooController < ApplicationController
layout 'foo'
def bar
respond_to do |format|
format.html # foo/bar.html.erb
format.js # foo/bar.js.erb
end
end
end
The templates to support it:
# app/views/layouts/foo.html.erb:
<html>...<%= yield %>...</html>
# app/views/layouts/foo.json.erb:
<%= yield %>
And an AJAX template in which I want to render a partial:
# app/views/foo/bar.js.erb:
dojo.byID('some_div').innerHTML = "<%= escape_javascript(render(:partial => 'some/partial')) %>";
If the JS template just has plain old JS in it (like alert('hi');), it uses my JS template. When I put in the render(:partial), though, it makes the whole response use the HTML template, which means it's no longer valid JS.
A possible solution is to use a function for the layout:
class FooController < ApplicationController
layout :choose_layout
...
private
def choose_layout
return nil if request.xhr?
'foo'
end
end
But my version should work! Why doesn't it?