Dynamically render view in a partial with Rails and jQuery

Question

In my app, I have a user profile page that has three tabs and a blank div below it. There is a default tab that is white and two other tabs that are darker and "unselected".

I want to make it so that the content in the div below renders a partial based on which tab is selected.

I already have it working to the point where jQuery allows me to click on the different tabs and it changes the colors of the tabs without a page refresh.

However, I am stuck on how to get the partial to render correctly. Any thoughts on this? I am stuck on how to dynamically call a partial based on which tab is selected in the jQuery and actually am not sure if I need another file to interact with this to make it work. I am relatively new to jQuery in a rails app so I am not sure if I've done everything I need to.

User profile page: app > views > show.html.erb

   <ul class="profile-tabs">    

        <%= link_to "<li class=\"tab selected\">Tab 1</li>".html_safe, userprofile_users_path, remote: true %>
        <%= link_to "<li class=\"tab\">Tab 2</li>".html_safe, userprofile_users_path, remote: true %>
        <%= link_to "<li class=\"tab\">Tab 3</li>".html_safe, userprofile_users_path, remote: true %>

    </ul>

<div id="profile-content">

<!--content goes here -->

</div>

jQuery: app > assets > javascripts > userprofile.js

$(function() {
        $("li.tab").click(function(e) {
          e.preventDefault();
          $("li.tab").removeClass("selected");
          $(this).addClass("selected");
          $("#profile-content").html("<%= escape_javascript(render partial: 
"How can I make this partial name be generated based on the value of the selected li?")%>");
        });
    });

Users Controller: app > controllers > users_controller.rb

class UsersController < ApplicationController

def show
    @user = User.find(params[:id])
end

def userprofile
    respond_to do |format|
        format.js
    end
end
end

There are three partials corresponding to the three tabs, and I need the jQuery to somehow dynamically change the partial being called based on the selected tab.

I'd really appreciate some help with this, or if there is another resource that can answer my question. I have not been able to find anything that directly answers what I am trying to do.

Update ------

I used the solution provided rails_has_elegance but nothing is appearing in the div I am targeting. However, I am seeing this in the rails server output, which seems like it is doing what I want:

Started GET "/users/currentoffers" for 127.0.0.1 at 2013-03-28 21:20:01 -0500
Processing by UsersController#currentoffers as JS
   Rendered users/_offers.html.erb (0.1ms)
   Rendered users/currentoffers.js.erb (0.8ms)
Completed 200 OK in 4ms (Views: 3.7ms | ActiveRecord: 0.0ms)
[2013-03-28 21:20:01] WARN  Could not determine content-length of response body. Set      content-length of the response or set Response#chunked = true

Answer 1

If you want to avoid a lot of parameters, just make 3 different actions in your controller, one for each tab, which each respond to js. Then create a [action].js.erb for each action in the views with something like this:

$("#tab_content").html("<%= escape_javascript(render('tab1')) %>");

You actually need to communicate with the server through a ajax request, whereas your onclick function would preload that partial and you don't have anything remote anymore.