Rails 3 refresh page with AJAX - ruby-on-rails

Question

I have already tried reading numerous articles and posts on the subject, but I am still bewildered and can't figure out what I need to do. Can someone explain exactly what I need to do?
I have a Rails server (3.2.11), with a model Game that represents the current state of a Ra game. My games_controller has the methods show for displaying the game and doturn for processing someone's action. The game view shows the current state of the game and contains links for each possible move, which submits back to the doturn action. My goal is to get the view to automatically refresh after a set time period or whenever one of the links is clicked, via AJAX. But try as I might, I can't get either one to work.
My views are currently setup as follows in the /views/games folder.
_game.html.erb actually renders the game
show.html.erb just adds a header and then renders the partial, _game.
show.js.erb is supposed to refresh the page. I'm not really sure how this works
I have also enabled Jquery with the //= require etc lines (they were already there by default)
Edit: I got AJAX on the links working, but I still have no idea how to make it autorefresh after a certain amount of time. Any ideas?
show.html.erb:
<h1>Game <%= #game._id %></h1>
<div id="test"><%= render #game %></div>
show.js.erb:
$('#test').html('<%= escape_javascript (render #game) %>')
Game Controller
# GET /games/1
# GET /games/1.json
def show
#game = Game.find(params[:id])
respond_to do |format|
format.html # show.html.erb
format.json { render json: #game }
format.js
end
end
# POST /games
def doturn
error = Proc.new do |message|
flash[:alert] = message
return render :inline => "<%= flash[:alert] %>"
#return redirect_to :back #must return from method immediately
end
#game = Game.where(id: params[:id]).first
if #game.nil?
error.call "Game not found"
end
#all the game update logic here
#game.save
redirect_to :action => "show", :id => #game._id
end
Here's a simplified version of my partial view. I cut out a lot of the rendering stuff, but it still has all the important behaviors. I figure I should try to get this view working first, and then I can add back in the rest of the code later.
<% game.game_players.each_with_index do |player, i| %>
<table>
<tr><td>Player <%= i+1 %></td></tr>
<tr><td>Suns: </td><td><%= player.suns %></td></tr>
<tr><td>Pharaohs: </td><td><%= player.pharaohs %></td></tr>
</table><p>
<%
make_linkt = lambda do |text, kwargs|
concat link_to text, {:remote => true, :method => "post", :action => "doturn", :id => game, :player => i}.merge(kwargs) # ** requires ruby 2
concat raw "<br/>"
end
if i == game.turn
if game.god_status == 0
make_linkt.call("Invoke Ra", :type=>"invoke")
if game.auction_track.size < 8
make_linkt.call("Draw tile", :type=>"draw")
end
else
make_linkt.call("Done", :type=>"god", :vals=>[], :endturn=>1)
end
end
%>
<% end %>
<br />

Answer 1

The project is over, but I figure I should document what I discovered in case anyone else comes across this question in the future. It's been a while, so I don't remember exactly what I did, but here's the best I can recall.
Setting :remote => true in the link_to parameters will mark the link with a special tag that causes it to automatically be turned into an AJAX link by Rails unobtrusive JS. Since it's an ordinary html link until the javascript runs, no extra effort is required to make the page work without Javascript enabled.
In order to get these AJAX links to work, you need two things. First, you have to define a js.erb file. In my case I had this in show.js.erb.
$('#test').html('<%= escape_javascript (render #game) %>')
Note that render #game is a shorthand that will render the partial view _game.html.erb with the #game parameter exposed as game.
Second, you need your controller to respond to the js format. Since my view was being rendered through the show action, I needed to add a respond for show.js. I put the following in my games_controller.
def show
#game = Game.find(params[:id])
respond_to do |format|
format.html # show.html.erb
format.json { render json: #game }
format.js
end
end
Getting the autorefresh is more complicated, because Rails doesn't provide magic to do it for you. I ended up creating a recurring function in the javascript to manually refresh the page with AJAX.
I put the following in my view, show.html.erb
<script>
$(document).ready(function() {
setInterval(function() {
$.ajax({
type: 'GET',
url: '<%= url_for(:action => 'show_partial', :id => #game) %>',
data: {},
cache: false,
success: function(result) {
$('#test').html(result)
}
});
}, 2000);
});
</script>
I then added an a show_partial action to the controller so the js could call it.
def show_partial
#game = Game.find(params[:id])
return render #game
end

Answer 2

You could execute a javascript setTimeout method that will be requesting the show.js view.
In your view (or in a .js asset rendered only for your specific page that shows the game):
<script type="text/javascript>
function updateGame(data){
$.ajax({
type: "GET",
url: "/games/whatever-your-path-is.js",
dataType: "script"
});
}
setTimeout(updateGame({gameId: '<%= #game.id %>'}, 5000)
</script>
The data variable in the updateGame, will be available in the ajax call in order for example to "generate" the appropriate url, ex: the line with url could be:
url: "/games/" + data.gameId + "/whatever.js"