How to respond to HTML requests made via AJAX in Rails

Question

I'm trying to write a Rails controller method that will respond to get requests made both "normally" (e.g. following a link) and via ajax.

Normal Case: The controller should respond with fully decorated HTML using the layout.

Ajax Case: The conroller should respond with the HTML snippet generated by the template (no layout)

Here's the jQuery code, I've created to run on the client side to do the get request.

jQuery.get("http://mydomain.com/some_controller/some_action", 
           {}, 
           function(data, textstatus) {
             jQuery("#target").html(data);
           },
           "html");

What's the best way to handle this in Rails?

Answer 1

In your controller dynamically select whether to use a layout based on request.xhr?.

For example:

class SomeController < ApplicationController
  layout :get_layout

  protected

  def get_layout
    request.xhr? ? nil : 'normal_layout'
  end
end

Answer 2

In your controller method, simply do this:

   respond_to do |format|
      format.js if request.xhr?
      format.html { redirect_to :action => "index"}
    end