Ajax search and javascript Rails 3

Rails
1

After doing a search of @homepages using ajax I want to update my div
with:-
$(“testsearch”).update("<%= escape_javascript(render(@homepages)%>");
in my index.js.erb

Which does not work as I am getting an internal server error:-
Error during failsafe response: incompatible encoding regexp match
(UTF-8 regexp with ASCII-8BIT string)

Anyone has any ideas why I am getting this error.

As a test the following renders OK.
$(“testsearch”).update("<%= escape_javascript(render :text =>‘this is
UJS’)%>");

2

I just found 2 things that might have a bearing on this.
In Javascript
1)escape() This function encodes special characters, with the
exception of: * @ - _ + . /

In Rails 3
2)escape_javascript(javascript)

Escape carrier returns and single and double quotes for JavaScript
segments.

[ show source ]

  # File actionpack/lib/action_view/helpers/javascript_helper.rb,

line 50
50: def escape_javascript(javascript)
51: if javascript
52: javascript.gsub(/(\|</|\r\n|[\n\r"’])/)
{ JS_ESCAPE_MAP[$1] }
53: else
54: ‘’
55: end
56: end

It looks like the escape_javascript function does not like @
I am not sure what the Javascript.gosub does as yet. As i am not into
js and reg exp.

Anyone has any ideas.

3

I have cracked it by going onto an IRC chat room (irc.freenode.net
RubyonRails) and a ProjectZen (human being somewhere out there in the
ether) helped me to get it working.

Apparently what was happening was that I was following Ryan B. who
does many extremely good Railcast videos, but he builds on previous
Railcast. Therefore in his 205 Railscast, which deals with Ajax calls,
he did not mention that you must have:-

format.js in the action in the controller.

His xxxx.searchxxxxx needs to be created in the controller or model.

And that when I did :-

<%= render(@homepages)%> (in his case <%= render(@products)%>)

The render was looking for a partial called “_homepage” (not
“homepages”) (I did not even have a partial therefore I got the UTF8
to ASCII error).

And then in “_homepage” I would add my code to render the results.

What I have now done in my index.html.erb is to put <%=
render(@homepages)%> , in the (div id = testsearch) in place of the
code I use to render @homepages and then place that code in a partial
“_homepage”. Now I can use “_homepage” for the html and the Ajax call.

At the moment I have a slight problem in that it is rendering all the
data in the"@homepages" as many times as the number of records. At the
moment I do not know why, but at least the Ajax call is working.