# Conditionally respond with HTTP redirect for xml\_http\_request **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [April 8, 2009, 7:52am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/conditionally-respond-with-http-redirect-for-xml-http-request/165010 "2009-04-08T07:52:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ram](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/b9bd4f/32.png) [@ram](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ram)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2009, 7:52am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/conditionally-respond-with-http-redirect-for-xml-http-request/165010/1 "2009-04-08T07:52:18Z")
Hi all, I have select box in one of my views which lists a few contacts. I also have an option in this select box to add a new contact. There is also an observe\_field hook to this select box that Ajax requests further info about the selected contact from the controller and displays it in an adjacent “info” div. Now, I need to redirect the user to the New Contact page from the controller if the selected value from the select box is “new contact”. This is the controller code I have now … if request.xml\_http\_request? if !@contact.blank? render :partial =\> “show”, :layout =\> false elsif params[:id] == “new contact” redirect\_to new\_contact\_path else render :text =\> “Please select a contact” end end This renders the New Contact page in the “info” div. Whereas, I want the user to be completely redirected to the New Contact page like a HTTP response would. Any thoughts on how I can handle this? Any ideas welcome… Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![ram](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/b9bd4f/32.png) [@ram](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ram)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2009, 9:20am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/conditionally-respond-with-http-redirect-for-xml-http-request/165010/2 "2009-04-08T09:20:51Z")
On Apr 8, 6:51 am, Ram [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > end > > This renders the New Contact page in the “info” div. Whereas, I want > the user to be completely redirected to the New Contact page like a > HTTP response would. > Any thoughts on how I can handle this? Any ideas welcome… > Thanks! Two ways of doing this: either the observe\_field thingy has a callback that redirects in the right circumstances or you switch to using render :update (and then use page.redirect\_to), In the latter case you have to use render :update for all of these 3 possibilities and you need to change your observe\_field invocation to not pass the :update option. Fred ---
**Author:** ![ram](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/b9bd4f/32.png) [@ram](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ram)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2009, 9:39am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/conditionally-respond-with-http-redirect-for-xml-http-request/165010/3 "2009-04-08T09:39:36Z")
Hi Fred, Thanks for your response. render :update Ive got quite a few Ruby conditions and styling going in the js.erb file im using now to display the contact information. And ive got more possibilities than the 3 ive shown above in the controller. So this might not be the right option for me. Right? observe\_field callback This might work for me. Right now, the only callbacks I have on the observe\_field are showing and hiding the spinner. I have never written custom callbacks on Rails JS helpers. Could you help me through this? So im guessing I should be having something like this \<%= observe\_field ‘contact\_id’, :frequency =\> 0.5, :update =\> ‘info’, :before =\> “Element.show(‘spinner’)”, :success =\> “handle\_contact\_request(value);”, :url =\> show\_contact\_path,:method =\>:get, :with =\> ‘contact\_id’ %\> and in application.js function handle\_contact\_request(value){ ``` Element.hide('spinner'); if value=="new contact" { //how do i redirect to the New Contact page? } else { //show contact info. But how do I handle the conditions ``` and styling?? } } Am I getting the basic idea right? If yes, how can I handle the conditional redirecting and the rest in Javascript? Thanks again Fred. On Apr 8, 12:20 pm, Frederick C. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) ---
**Author:** ![ram](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/b9bd4f/32.png) [@ram](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ram)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2009, 9:58am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/conditionally-respond-with-http-redirect-for-xml-http-request/165010/4 "2009-04-08T09:58:57Z")
On Apr 8, 8:38 am, Ram [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > Hi Fred, > > Thanks for your response. > > render :update > Ive got quite a few Ruby conditions and styling going in the js.erb > file im using now to display the contact information. And ive got more > possibilities than the 3 ive shown above in the controller. So this > might not be the right option for me. Right? I’m not sure this would be a problem - seems like a few calls to page.replace\_html ‘info’, :partial =\> ‘blah’ would do it in the other cases. > ``` > :success => "handle_contact_request(value);", :url => > > ``` > > show\_contact\_path,:method =\>:get, > :with =\> ‘contact\_id’ %\> Nearly. your success callback gets 2 thigns: response and responseJSON. responseJSON contains whatever JSON you put in the X- JSON header of your response. You callback can be as simple as check\_for\_redirect(json){ if(json && json.redirect) page.location = json.redirect } and then pass :success =\> “check\_for\_redirect(responseJSON)”. All you need to do is to set that header appropriately if you want a redirect to happen. Fred ---
**Author:** ![ram](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/b9bd4f/32.png) [@ram](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ram)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2009, 10:47am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/conditionally-respond-with-http-redirect-for-xml-http-request/165010/5 "2009-04-08T10:47:40Z")
🙂 You were right. It was easy enough to use render :update and replace\_html with :partial to accomplish it. I am however curious as to how we can do this using JSON. I started reading about JSON for another feature I needed but I realised I dint need JSON for it. I feel it would be a good exercise for me to implement it in tackling this problem. Could you explain a little bit more about the code you have shown me above or point me to where I can find the documentation explaining this? From what I remember, JSON is a format (Object Notation) to represent ActiveRecord objects (in Rails) for JS to handle. But setting the header, responseJSON et all is new to me. Thanks Fred! On Apr 8, 12:57 pm, Frederick C. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) ---
**Author:** ![ram](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/b9bd4f/32.png) [@ram](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ram)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2009, 10:58am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/conditionally-respond-with-http-redirect-for-xml-http-request/165010/6 "2009-04-08T10:58:15Z")
I am trying to implement Craig A.'s Redbox for some form submissions. Ideally for me, when the user selects “Add contact” a redbox modal window should open with the New Contact form and on submission, the contacts select box on the main page should get updated with the newly added contact. I was looking into invoking Redbox from the controller for this ([http://ahref.in/8dc58](http://ahref.in/8dc58)) but I couldnt quite grasp the discussion there. Can Redbox be brought in here without too much trouble? thanks again for you inputs!