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Dale Hollocher
1,598 Pointsjs versus json
I originally leanred to use AJAX via ryanbates tutorial in which he focuses on using js and creating js.erb templates. Once starting your video, I wondered about the pros and cons of the two approaches. I found this discussion helpful: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8439938/ruby-on-rails-json-vs-js-ajax-response
Anyway, what are your thoughts on this?
1 Answer
Aurelien Schlumberger
6,127 PointsIn my experience, ajax is really used for making your app more interactive (update content without reloading the page). JSON becomes handy when sending out or receiving in data from another website (ex: receiving the user profile data from twitter as a hash).
Of course both Ajax and Json can work together.
Kevin Lozandier
Courses Plus Student 53,747 PointsKevin Lozandier
Courses Plus Student 53,747 PointsHi, Dale Hollocher:
You only need to add
.erbto your js files if you want to useerbvariables, values, and processing before your files gets compiles to JavaScript. Rails knows to handle a file a particular way before its final extension defined from right to left.For example:
myawesomejavascriptfile.js.coffee.whateverRails will ultimately generate this file as a
.jsfile, but will preprocess the file first as.coffeeand.whatever, as long as the template handler or engine for a particular filetype is known to Rails.When it comes to preprocessing with
.erb, there are many reasons you may have to do prepend.erb, particularly AJAX-related tasks, is to refer to a particular instance of a model the JavaScript files needs to get the desired outcome you want.It comes in handy if you don't have another alternative of getting the required information you need about something that was generated from your Rails App (do note there's many ways around this, the most obvious is use a JavaScript framework).