Javascript refresh?

Rails
1

Hi

I am trying to refresh the contents of a page after selecting certain
options on a drop-down list.

I have created the drop down as such:

<%= select_tag “itemSelect”, options_for_select([‘All’, ‘Latest’],
‘All’), { :onchange => remote_function(
:with => ‘Form.Element.serialize(this)’,
:url => {:action => ‘finishedItems’}) } %>

This passes back the correct value to the controller, and I use this
to change values in a named_scope to generate the relevant content in
the rest of the page.

However I am unsure of how to refresh this content, without completely
reloading the page,

Is this where render_partial comes in useful?

P.S - I am not gathering any id’s from the database directly in the
select, it is just a local function for refreshing data on the page.

2

If you are using rails 2 you may want to check examples for
‘observe_field’ and ‘observe_form’ helpers; they’ll use ajax to update
your page without reloading it.
If you are using rails 3 you’ll have to find their new counterparts,
as these 2 are deprecated. Unfortunately I can’t give more info about
this since I’m slightly outdated with R3.

Regards