CRUD pattern for modals

Rails
1

I have an application, where i.e., I can go to the users controllers,
and they manage all the basic actions by rest, like creating, modifying,
updating and deleting records.

Now, I want to reuse that code, from another part in the web page, so I
can list the users on that other controller, and if I press on add, I
want the users/new page to open, in a popup (like facebox or anything
like that) but without breaking the code that I already have for
managing the users (since I want to modify the users for the both
places).

The main problem is that for the popup, I need another layout to be
displayed, and once the record is created/updated, I need to display a
message status instead of redirecting back the user to the users index.

Is there a pattern, a tutorial or something you can point me at so I can
figure out the best way to do it?

Thanks

2

The popup sounds like some AJAX. You can create JavaScript views for
your actions (action.js.erb) and use XHR with an Accept: text/
javascript header to get those views (probably users/index.js.erb and
users/new.js.erb), and do the popup etc. within that. Similar course
of action for users/create.js.erb, which would display the message
when it was finished. That’s a quick overview, check out this
Railscast to get a better idea of how to do that.

3

Another option is rb-lightbox, which is made for RoR (and depends on
prototype)
http://code.google.com/p/rb-lightbox-plugin/

It gives you functions like “link_to_lightbox” and
“link_to_remote_lightbox” (ajax).

4

If you really want to have a pop-up and don’t want to deal with Ajax
at all, then I would suggest fancybox http://fancybox.net
It is actually an iframe, but gives you a popup like feeling and you
can use your normal controller, just that in click of a link, it will
open the fancybox and serve you in the iframe.

-Gourav