Unobtrusive dynamic form fields in Rails with jQuery

Question

I\'m attempting to get over the hurdle of dynamic form fields in Rails -- this appears to be something the framework doesn\'t handle very gracefully. I\'m also using jQuery

Answer 1

By the way. rails has changed a bit so you can not longer use _delete, now use _destroy.

def remove_child_link(name, f)
  f.hidden_field(:_destroy) + link_to(name, "javascript:void(0)", :class => "remove_child")
end

Also I found it easier to just remove html that is for new records... so i do this

$(function() {
  $('form a.add_child').click(function() {
    var association = $(this).attr('data-association');
    var template = $('#' + association + '_fields_template').html();
    var regexp = new RegExp('new_' + association, 'g');
    var new_id = new Date().getTime();

    $(this).parent().before(template.replace(regexp, new_id));
    return false;
  });

  $('form a.remove_child').live('click', function() {
    var hidden_field = $(this).prev('input[type=hidden]')[0];
    if(hidden_field) {
      hidden_field.value = '1';
    }
    $(this).parents('.new_fields').remove();
    $(this).parents('.fields').hide();
    return false;
  });
});