AJAX Support and Rails

Rails
1

Hello there,

This is my first post to the Ruby group. I am also new to the language
and the Rails framework, it is an amazing place to be now. Coming from
a PHP/ASP background I am glad something like Rails finally made it
into web development.

Now to my question. I have been readying a lot about AJAX, and I
wondered what kind of support is built-in into Rails for it. I read
somewhere that Prototype or even Scriptaculous was somehow embedded
into the Framework.

Could anyone elaborate on this? How do we use AJAX in a regular web
application with Rails, where does the code go, and what is available?

Thanks a lot guys… any advice would be most welcome.

Best Regards,

Jose L. Hurtado
Web D. / IT Professional
Toronto, Canada

2

Hi Jose,

check this out:
http://api.rubyonrails.com/classes/ActionView/Helpers/ScriptaculousHelper.html
http://api.rubyonrails.com/classes/ActionView/Helpers/PrototypeHelper.html

–
Yan

http://planyp.us

On Tue, 22 Aug 2006 16:05:15 -0500, Jose-Luis [email protected]
wrote:

somewhere that Prototype or even Scriptaculous was somehow embedded
Web D. / IT Professional
Toronto, Canada

–
Using Opera’s revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/

3

This is where most people get started. Well where I did.

Brad.
http://www.pcast.com

4

Brad,

Thanks for the link, it is a very good tutorial, I just started
following it through.

It’s nice to see most of what we need is already built in!

Best Regards,

Jose L. Hurtado
Web D. / IT Professional
Toronto, Canada

5

Yan,

Thanks for the links! I will check them out.

Best Regards,

Jose L. Hurtado
Web D. / IT Professional
Toronto, Canada

6

Just a note:

Scriptaculous is not Ajax, it’s just effects on DOM elements.

Prototype is the Ajax library.

Scriptaculous gives the effects that have come to be recognized as
‘Ajax’
(fade, blind, etc).

Jason

7

Jan,

I forgot to mention, I was already looking at Scriptaculous, it is a
very cool AJAX framework, and Ruby’s support for it is another reason
to use it.

By the way, the folks at Gucci used it to achieve a Flash-like AJAX
version of their website, and it does look great, take a look here:

http://www.gucci.com/

Jose L. Hurtado
Web D. / IT Professional
Toronto, Canada

8

Jason,

Isn’t this “difference” purely semantic.

From what I understood, Scriptaculous includes Prototype within their
own framework, so if you use Scriptaculous you are using Prototype
anyway for the AJAX plumbing stuff, BUT it is included in the package.
Am I right on this one? Or do you actually need to setup BOTH
Prototype and Scriptaculous to make BOTH work. The way I understood
it, was that Scripatculous was enough for full AJAX plus visual
effects…

Jose L. Hurtado
Web D. / IT Professional
Toronto, Canada