ActiveJax is a [RoR](http://www.rubyonrails.org/ “Ruby on Rails”) plugin. It’s goal is to be an effective [ActiveRecord](http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/ActiveRecord “ActiveRecord in Ruby on Rails”) -> [Prototypejs](http://www.prototypejs.org/ “Prototype JavaScript framework: Easy Ajax and DOM manipulation for dynamic web applications”) bridge, allowing you to directly call your finders from javascript. Alright let’s see some code:
Ruby Model:
class Author < ActiveRecord::Base
active_jax
def find_by_name(n)
find(:all, :conditions => {:name => n})
end
end
Java Script
ActiveJax.Author.find_by_name("Nicholas Schlueter").
each(function(author) {
alert(author.name);
});
As you can see you just call the finder by name in the javascript.
It can also do belongs_to associations:
Ruby Model:
class Author < ActiveRecord::Base
active_jax :include => :publisher
belongs_to :publisher
def find_by_name(n)
find(:all, :conditions => {:name => n})
end
end
Java Script
ActiveJax.Author.find_by_name("Nicholas Schlueter").
each(function(author) {
alert(author.publisher.name);
});
Hold on, isn’t that pretty dangerous. It’s true, exposing your model can be dangerous. There is some security built in. Building on our previous example:
Ruby Model:
class Author < ActiveRecord::Base
active_jax :include => :publisher, :excluded_columns => :email
belongs_to :publisher
def find_by_name(n)
find(:all, :conditions => {:name => n})
end
end
Java Script
ActiveJax.Author.find_by_name("Nicholas Schlueter").
each(function(author) {
alert(author.publisher.name);
});
Hurray! The email address is no longer published to all would be spammers (bastards).
In order for all this to work you have to do 1 more thing, include the following somewhere in your html doc:
<%= active\_jax\_include %>
There is also a way to enable controller actions, but to be honest it is only partially thought through.
Anyone interested in learning more is encouraged to download the ActiveJax Sample Application and/or install the plugin and try it out.
./script/plugin install http://svn.simpltry.com/plugins/active_jax
In the future more information will be available at [http://rails.simpltry.com/active_jax.html](http://rails.simpltry.com/active_jax.html). Please be aware this isn’t production tested or efficient, I will be accepting patches and updating this as needed.
