render partial on click - ruby-on-rails

Question

I would like to call partials on some standard operations. I am using this method for calling the partial:
%li= link_to 'Delete Event', 'javascript:void(0);', :class => 'alert tiny button', :data => {'reveal-id' => :RevealDelete}
= render 'layouts/reveal_delete', :item => event_display(#event.event), :resource => #event
Then in my partial,
#RevealDelete.reveal-modal
%a.close-reveal-modal ×
%h3= "Delete #{item}"
%p Are you sure you want to delete this?
=link_to "Delete #{item}", resource, :method => :delete, :remote => :true, :confirm => resource, :class => 'button close-reveal-modal'
%a.button.alert.close-reveal-modal Cancel
How can I have this has as something like:
link_to 'Delete', '#', :partial => 'layouts/delete', :remote => :true?
so that I only render that partial when clicked and not when the page loads?

Answer 1

You can do that with javascript like:
<%= link_to "Delete", delete_content_path, :remote => true %>
The action in your corresponding controller then will be this:
My Controller:
def delete_content
respond_to do |format|
format.js
end
end
Then you can create the delete_content.js.erb inside your correct directory of the link and there you put the following code:
delete_content.js.erb
$('#div_id').html("<%= render :partial => 'my_partial' %>");
Then in your view:
delete_content.html.erb
<div id = "div_id">
#this div is html div that will render your partial
</div>
Don't forget to put your partial _my_partial.html.erb in the same folder.

Answer 2

To add to the accepted answer, I only got it to work after changing the js portion to the following:
$('#div_id').html("<%= escape_javascript(render :partial => 'my_partial') %>");
Without the escape_javascript it was just rendering the partial in the background and not updating the view.

Answer 3

on the view do this:
link_to "Delete #{item}", '/model/confirm_deletion', :method => :delete, :remote => true #add the class and extra attributes if neeeded
on your controller
def confirm_deletion
end
and add a view to the confirm_deletion action in js
#RevealDelete.reveal-modal
%a.close-reveal-modal ×
%h3= "Delete #{item}"
%p Are you sure you want to delete this?
=link_to "Delete #{item}", resource, :method => :delete, :remote => :true, :confirm => resource, :class => 'button close-reveal-modal'
%a.button.alert.close-reveal-modal Cancel
:javascript
$(body).append($('#RevealDelete'));
that would make an ajax request to load that custom confirmation dialog, maybe you want to add some wrapper to insert the dialog instead of using body.append