How Does Rails 3's "data-method='delete'" Degrade Gracefully?

Question

Rails 3 does some cool stuff to make Javascript unobtrusive, so they've done things like this:

= link_to "Logout", user_session_path, :method => :delete 

..converts to

<a href="/logout" data-method="delete" rel="nofollow">Logout</a> 

But it just occurred to me.. When I turn off javascript the method isn't DELETE anymore, it's GET as expected. So are there plans to, or is there some way to, allow these data- attributes to degrade gracefully, so that link still is a DELETE request?

Answer 1

The change they made in Rails 3 with these data- attributes wasn't about graceful degradation, it was about unobtrusive JavaScript.

In Rails 2, specifying :method => :delete on a link would generate a whole bunch of inline JavaScript that would create a form with a hidden input and then submit the form. That was the same as it is now: turn off JavaScript and it defaults to a GET request. As such, supporting the case of no JavaScript is the same as it was before.

One option is to use a form/button instead of a link so you can include the method as a hidden field, much like the Rails 2 JavaScript does. Another option is to have the GET version take you to an intermediate page which in turn has the form/button.

The benefit of the new approach is that it's unobtrusive. The JavaScript for changing the HTTP verb exists in an external file and uses the data- attributes to determine which elements it should be attached to.