Updating a select the correct way?

I have two objects. The first one (let’s use the standard
example
of artists/albums here) is pre-loaded from the page but I want the
second
one to load when the user changes the value in the first form. Before
RoR I
would just do this with the onChange handler of the object. The
onChange would fire off a javascript function that would use the results
of
a XMLHTTPRequst to reset the options for the target .

In RoR the standard way seems to just be replace the entire field object
by
replacing the contents of a div (observe_field, etc). Is there any built
in
way to just replace the items in the select?

What am I missing?

Thanks,
Geoffeg