Ruby, Rails, Web2.0 » Blog Archive » Add a powerful AJAX Table to your Rails Application in 5 minutes

Add a powerful AJAX Table to your Rails Application in 5 minutes
December 10th, 2008

I needed to add an AJAX grid/table component with all the bells and whistles (AJAX sorting, pagination, multiple row select, AJAX add/delete etc) to an application I am working on right now (will blog about it when we roll out a good-enough version). We are using jQuery so I started looking for a suitable plugin.

I believe I have found it - it’s called jqGrid and it’s super sexy, feature rich and the documentation is on par with a commercial tool - so I created a Rails plug-in enabling you to add it to your Rails app in no time! Follow the 10 steps below to find out how.

Create a blank Rails app (in your home dir - or change the path in the next step):
```
rails -d mysql grid_test
```
1. rails -d mysql grid_test

install jQuery:
```
curl http://jqueryjs.googlecode.com/files/jquery-1.2.6.pack.js > ~/grid_test/public/javascripts/jquery.js
```
1. curl http://jqueryjs.googlecode.com/files/jquery-1.2.6.pack.js > ~/grid_test/public/javascripts/jquery.js

install jquery_grid_for_rails - I am using giternal (how to install), so this is what you need to do in this case: open config/giternal.yml and enter:
```
jquery_grid_for_rails:
  repo: git://github.com/scrubber/jquery_grid_for_rails.git
  path: vendor/plugins
```
then run
```
giternal update
```
1. giternal update
(obviously you can use script/plugin, git submodules, piston, braid or whatever floats your boat)

Generate a migration to test out stuff with:

script/generate resource person

script/generate resource person 

class CreatePeople < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def self.up
    create_table :people do |t|
      t.string :first_name, :last_name, :title, :i_can_has_cheezburger 
    end
  end

  def self.down
    drop_table :people
  end
end

class CreatePeople < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def self.up
    create_table :people do |t|
      t.string :first_name, :last_name, :title, :i_can_has_cheezburger 
    end
  end
 
  def self.down
    drop_table :people
  end
end 

generate dummy data

script/generate migration create_dummy_people_data_migration

script/generate migration create_dummy_people_data_migration 

class CreateDummyPeopleDataMigration < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def self.up
    Person.create :first_name =>"He", :last_name => "Man", :title => "Hero", :i_can_has_cheezburger => "Sure"
    Person.create :first_name =>"Bat", :last_name => "Man", :title => "Mr.", :i_can_has_cheezburger => "Yeah"
    Person.create :first_name =>"Cat", :last_name => "Woman", :title => "Ms.", :i_can_has_cheezburger => "Yes"
    Person.create :first_name => "Super", :last_name => "Man", :title => "d00d", :i_can_has_cheezburger => "Nope"
    Person.create :first_name => "Spider", :last_name => "Man", :title => "Mr.", :i_can_has_cheezburger => "Meh"
    Person.create :first_name => "Chuck", :last_name => "Norris", :title => "Sir", :i_can_has_cheezburger => "Who is asking?"
    Person.create :first_name => "G.I.", :last_name => "Joe", :title => "Sgt", :i_can_has_cheezburger => "What is a cheezeburger?"
  end

  def self.down
    Person.destroy_all
  end
end

class CreateDummyPeopleDataMigration < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def self.up
    Person.create :first_name =>"He", :last_name => "Man", :title => "Hero", :i_can_has_cheezburger => "Sure"
    Person.create :first_name =>"Bat", :last_name => "Man", :title => "Mr.", :i_can_has_cheezburger => "Yeah"
    Person.create :first_name =>"Cat", :last_name => "Woman", :title => "Ms.", :i_can_has_cheezburger => "Yes"
    Person.create :first_name => "Super", :last_name => "Man", :title => "d00d", :i_can_has_cheezburger => "Nope"
    Person.create :first_name => "Spider", :last_name => "Man", :title => "Mr.", :i_can_has_cheezburger => "Meh"
    Person.create :first_name => "Chuck", :last_name => "Norris", :title => "Sir", :i_can_has_cheezburger => "Who is asking?"
    Person.create :first_name => "G.I.", :last_name => "Joe", :title => "Sgt", :i_can_has_cheezburger => "What is a cheezeburger?"
  end
 
  def self.down
    Person.destroy_all
  end
end 

Time to run the migrations!

Set up the db first:
```
rake db:create
```
1. rake db:create
run teh migrations:
```
rake db:migrate
```
1. rake db:migrate

Set up the controller (PeopleController) - add this method:
```
  def grid_data
    @people = Person.all(:order => "#{params[:sidx]} #{params[:sord]}")

    respond_to do |format|
      format.xml { render :partial => 'grid_data.xml.builder', :layout => false }
    end    
  end
```
1. def grid_data
2. @people = Person.all(:order => "#{params[:sidx]} #{params[:sord]}")
4. respond_to do |format|
5. format.xml { render :partial => ‘grid_data.xml.builder‘, :layout => false }
6. end
7. end

Modify config/routes.rb to look like
```
map.resources :people, :collection => {:grid_data => :get}
```
1. map.resources :people, :collection => {:grid_data => :get}

This goes into your application layout (create a new file - views/layouts/application.html.erb):
```
    
        
        
        <%= javascript_include_tag 'jquery' %>
        <%= include_jquery_grid_javascript %>
        <%= include_jquery_grid_css %>
    
    
        <%= yield %>
    
 
```
1. <html>
2. <head>
3. <title>jqGrid Test App - w00t!</title>
4. <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
5. <%= javascript_include_tag ‘jquery’ %>
6. <%= include_jquery_grid_javascript %>
7. <%= include_jquery_grid_css %>
8. </head>
9. <body>
10. <%= yield %>
11. </body>
12. </html>
The last step: views (views/people/griddata.xml.builder, views/people/index.html.erb)
```
xml.instruct! :xml, :version=>"1.0", :encoding=>"UTF-8"
xml.rows do
  xml.page params[:page]
  xml.total_pages (@people.size.to_i / params[:rows].to_i)
  xml.records{@people.size}
  @people.each do |u|
    xml.row :id => u.id do
      xml.cell u.title
      xml.cell u.first_name
      xml.cell u.last_name
      xml.cell u.i_can_has_cheezburger
    end
  end
end
```
1. xml.instruct! :xml, :version=>"1.0", :encoding=>"UTF-8"
2. xml.rows do
3. xml.page params[:page]
4. xml.total_pages (@people.size.to_i / params[:rows].to_i)
5. xml.records{@people.size}
6. @people.each do |u|
7. xml.row :id => u.id do
8. xml.cell u.title
9. xml.cell u.first_name
10. xml.cell u.last_name
11. xml.cell u.i_can_has_cheezburger
12. end
13. end
14. end
```
  <%= jquery_grid :sample, {:url => grid_data_people_url } %>
  
    My cool AJAX grid!
    <%= jquery_grid_table %>
    <%= jquery_grid_pager %>
  
```
1. <%= jquery_grid :sample, {:url => grid_data_people_url } %>
2. <center>
3. <div style="background :black; color:white; width:518px;">My cool AJAX grid!</div>
4. <%= jquery_grid_table %>
5. <%= jquery_grid_pager %>
6. </center>

That’s it! Start script/server, point your app to http://localhost:3000/people and if you did everything according the tutorial, you should (hopefully) see something like this:

I have uploaded the app to github, be sure to check it out (WARNING - don’t copy and paste from the above code, the code highlighting plugin has some problems and you’d get strange results. Clone the repo instead).

Note that the installed plug-in is included in .gitignore so you have to run “giternal update” after you clone it.

Drop me a comment if you experience any problems!

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 10th, 2008 at 10:37 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

41 Responses to “Add a powerful AJAX Table to your Rails Application in 5 minutes”

jason white Says:
December 11th, 2008 at 8:31 am
thank you for the outstanding tutorial
peter Says:
December 11th, 2008 at 11:41 am
@jason: Glad you liked it!
Web 2.0 Announcer Says:
December 11th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
Add a powerful AJAX Table to your Rails Application in 5 minutes…

[...]Full tutorial: adding a powerful jQuery table to a Rails application step by step, from scratch to viewing app in your browser. Includes full source code.[...]…
Ali Says:
December 12th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Thanks. Very useful
Ali Says:
December 13th, 2008 at 12:13 am
However I get the following error:

Errno::ENOENT in People#index

No such file or directory - /home/…./grid3/config/jquery_grid/sample.yml

2: <%= jquerygrid :sample, {:url => griddatapeopleurl } %>
peter Says:
December 13th, 2008 at 3:40 am
Ali… indeed, the file /config/jquery_grid_sample.yml is missing for some reason - please clone the example app repo (git clone git://github.com/scrubber/jquery_grid_for_rails_sampleapp.git) and copy it from there.

Strange though that it is missing…
links for 2008-12-13 « pabloidz Says:
December 13th, 2008 at 5:01 am
[...] Add a powerful AJAX Table to your Rails Application in 5 minutes Ruby, Rails, Web2.0 (tags: rails ajax jquery) [...]
Ali Says:
December 13th, 2008 at 8:44 am
That’s what I’ve done. I’ve solved the problem by copying the jquery_grid in config folder of the project.

Thanks Peter
Ali Says:
December 19th, 2008 at 5:42 am
Hi Peter.

How do you do to delete a row?

I’ve tried with :function_onclickSubmit: “(params){alert(’kos’); }” with no results.

Thanks
Bala Paranj Says:
December 19th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
What values should I pass for sidx and sord ? Thanks.
peter Says:
December 20th, 2008 at 2:40 am
@Bala: sord can be ‘asc’ or ‘desc’. sid should be the column name.
Heath Morrison Says:
January 5th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
Thanks for this tutorial! It has been helpful.

Step 10 instructs you to create “views/people/griddata.xml.builder”, which is not the file referenced by the controller. This should be “views/people/_grid_data.xml.builder”. (Note: I attempted to paste the correct filename here in the blog comment, but the blog is treating the leading underscore as an escape character. Heh. I used an HTML escape to render things properly…)

I tried giternal as you suggested, but also ran into the sample.yml problems. I was also missing the CSS and JS files in my public/ dir. I went with script/plugin instead, which correctly copied all these files for me.

Thanks again!
Doug Peterman Says:
January 7th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
The tutorial is great. I was able to get the grid up and running in no time. I did struggle getting the editing features to work until I found this article on how to automatically embed the authenticity token.
Rails-Authenticity-token-with-jquery
Thomas Reitz Says:
January 16th, 2009 at 8:14 pm
“Excellent point! I read most of your article and establish it great. The points you furnished in your article are magnificent. I am actually waiting for your following conceived of.

Thanks and best of luck!”
Peter Marx Says:
January 29th, 2009 at 7:36 am
Man - this tutorial really helped. Good Job! Got it up and running easily.
If I now could find a example REST-App which allows to add/delete rows and to edit/select cell data/pulldowns I’d be happiest man in the world.
I tried to do this in Dojo and jmaki but it didn’t work. Jsgrid looks easier to cope with.

Do you know about an display/edit app ?
peter Says:
January 29th, 2009 at 7:41 am
Peter,

Sure - check this out: http://codetunes.com/2008/12/08/rails-ajax-and-jquery/
Peter Marx Says:
January 30th, 2009 at 8:16 am
ooooook……
thanks for the link. It’s written for experienced web programmers. Tried it , but as a pure Rails and man and Ajax newbee i can’t transfer his hints onto your example to get a RESTful grid. The leap from readonly to full edit seems to be as high as with Dojo. Do you have any more idea where to look ? Thanks in advance.
Peter Szinek Says:
January 30th, 2009 at 8:33 am
Not really… I am planning to create a second part of this tutorial, which would include the stuff you are requesting. Now that I know that people would need it (you are not the first, and most probably not the last one to ask for this) I might force myself to write part II…
Peter Marx Says:
January 30th, 2009 at 9:38 am
yes please! should i convince your boss (or wife) ?
Even in books you can’t find full-blown railish examples. Best i found online today for php was

http://www.trirand.com/jqgrid/jqgrid.html

there is still not enough love for RoR in the world..
Peter Szinek Says:
January 30th, 2009 at 10:22 am
hehe, my wife is also my boss, kinda (my pair programming partner and officially the CEO of our LLC) so at least you don’t have to hassle with more people

Ok, I’ll look into it during the weekend, I guess a mid-week blog post sounds realistic (or next weekend… or something don’t like to make promises as I am mega-swamped w/ ‘real’ work
Peter Marx Says:
January 31st, 2009 at 9:55 am
great! I’m looking forward to it!
david Says:
February 9th, 2009 at 5:14 am
Is there any working demo on using yield, Ajax for dynamic content? or a Dynamic Help System.

Regards.

David
Steffen Says:
February 17th, 2009 at 4:12 am
Hi, thanks very much for the tutorial! I tried to use it for my own program but I can’t get it to display the data. If i go to http://127.0.0.1:3000/planets it only shows me the table heading.

If I go to http://127.0.0.1:3000/planets/grid_data however it does show the correct information (tho it complains “This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below.” but I think that is normal).

I’ve tried various things but I just can’t get it to work
Any chance someone can take a look at this and tell me where I’m going wrong, or give some hints?

Here’s what I think are the most relevant bits of the source files:
app/views/planets/index.html.erb:

<%= jquerygrid :sample, {:url => griddataplanetsurl } %>

using this doesnt work either: <%= jquerygrid :sample, {:url => “http://127.0.0.1:3000/planets/griddata” } %>

Planets - Uni40.org
<%= jquerygridtable %>
<%= jquerygridpager %>

app/controllers/planets_controller.rb:

[...]
def grid_data
params[:sidx]=:id
params[:sord]=”asc”
params[:rows]=20
@planets = Planet.all(:order => “#{params[:sidx]} #{params[:sord]}”)
```
respond_to do |format|
  format.xml { render :partial => 'grid_data.xml.builder', :layout => false }
end
```
end
[...]

app/views/layouts/application.html.erb:

Railpot in Ajax

app/views/planets/griddata.xml.builder:

xml.instruct! :xml, :version=>”1.0″, :encoding=>”UTF-8″
xml.rows do
xml.page params[:page]
xml.totalpages(@planets.size.toi / params[:rows].toi)
xml.records{@planets.size}
@planets.each do |u|
xml.row :id => u.id do
xml.cell u.universeid
xml.cell u.playername
xml.cell u.galaxyno
xml.cell u.systemno
xml.cell u.planetno
end
end
end
Steffen Says:
February 17th, 2009 at 4:22 am
Ok the comment function kinda crippled my code so I put it up as an archive: http://94.192.245.178:3000/railpot2009-02-171121.tar.bz2
Steffen Says:
February 17th, 2009 at 4:45 am
lol it crippled my link as well. here it is without any underscores in the filename: http://94.192.245.178:3000/railpot-2009-02-17-1121.tar.bz2
juliet Says:
March 9th, 2009 at 9:01 pm
a bit too complicated for a person like me who is not a computer literate but very clever if it works for some, not for me though good luck to the person who created it.
Farida Says:
March 13th, 2009 at 4:02 am
I am dying to take this for a drive except …

I installed the it as a plugin:
script/plugin install git://github.com/scrubber/jquerygridfor_rails.git

no errors

created everything. run it, got error: undefined method `jquerygrid’ for #
rechecked the code yup - included jquery in view/layout/application.html.erb file
<%= javascriptincludetag ‘jquery’ %>
<%= includejquerygridjavascript %>
<%= includejquerygrid_css %>

checked the vendor/plugin folder - yup - it’s there - but it’s empty.

I am a newbie. Tried to get giternal - link that you provided gone, so found giternal by Pat Maddox. Don’t know what to do with it since there are no install instructions. Darn.
http://github.com/pat-maddox/giternal/tree/master

So I download the scrubber jquery from github, untarred it, and copied the jquery folder from config into my app. No dice. same error.

I am sure that I am making a foolish error somewhere - any ideas?

TIA, Farida
Farida Says:
March 13th, 2009 at 8:22 am
Tried using the giternal posted by Pat Maddox on github: http://github.com/pat-maddox/giternal/tree/master

Any help about what to do after the downloading. I tried:

gem sources -a http://gems.github.com
gem install giternal
giternal update

C:grid_test>giternal update
C:/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/giternal-0.0.2/bin/../lib/giternal/repository.rb:
23:in update': Directory 'jquery_grid_for_rails' exists but is not a git reposi tory (RuntimeError) from C:/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/giternal-0.0.2/bin/../lib/giternal/a pp.rb:8:inupdate’

TIA, Farida
Farida Says:
March 13th, 2009 at 11:11 am
Hi,

Dan Croak helped me out. He said to get the it:
http://github.com/scrubber/jquerygridfor_rails (click the “download”
button)

and save it to vendor/plugins
I did it and renamed the file jquerygrid. Then I copied over the config/jquerygrid folder with the sample.

Yeah - no errors. Darn - no grid either. More head scratching. Checked above code. Yup looks good. Did change the file name like Heath said because it was rendering partial. He also mentioned about plugin install - but being a newbie I was not exactly what to do.

Any suggestions what I screwed up? View source shows that it is getting:
var lastsel2;
jQuery(document).ready(function(){
jQuery(”#sample”).jqGrid({
imgpath: “/stylesheets/jqGrid-themes/basic/images”,
pager: jQuery(’#samplepager’),
mtype: “GET”,
onSelectRow: function(id) {
if(id && id!==lastsel2) { $(’#sample’).restoreRow(lastsel2); $(’#sample’).editRow(id,true); lastsel2=id; }
},
datatype: “xml”,
sortname: “firstname”,
colNames: ["title", "first name", "last name", "i can has cheezburger?"],
sortorder: “desc”,
colModel: [{"editable": true, "index": "title", "name": "title", "width": 40}, {"editable": true, "index": "firstname", "name": "firstname", "width": 130}, {"editable": true, "index": "lastname", "name": "lastname", "width": 130}, {"editable": false, "index": "icanhascheezburger", "name": "icanhascheezburger", "width": 200}],
rowNum: 10,
url: “http://localhost:3000/people/grid_data”
});
});

Thanks, Farida
Farida Says:
March 13th, 2009 at 11:33 am
Tried http://localhost:3000/people/grid_data

Mysql::Error: You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ” at line 1: SELECT * FROM people ORDER BY

tried grid_data with a comma
@people = Person.all(:order => “#{params[:sidx]}, #{params[:sord]}”)

same error with a comma in it ORDER BY ,

hmm. Any suggestions where I went wrong?
Thanks, Farida
Bob Walsh Says:
March 20th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
What happens if you want to use this plugin for two or more grids in the same view?

Since this specifies the grid in the view:
<%= jquerygridtable %>
<%= jquerygridpager %>

How can you specify a second grid?
RussK Says:
April 21st, 2009 at 1:11 pm
Thanks for the great demo. I had a problem that I fixed, but I don’t understand why I had the problem. I’m using RadRails in Eclipse. I loaded the jquerygridforrails plugin using git, and everything appeared under vendor/plugins/jquerygridforrails. But when I ran the app, it couldn’t find any of the javascript or stylesheets. When I compared my code to the demo code on github, I saw that these files were directly in the app’s public javascripts and stylesheets directories. When I copied these directories from the plugin to my app, everything worked. My question is why wouldn’t my app load from the vendor/plugins directory? Is there a configuration change I need to make to tell it to do that?
kate Says:
May 8th, 2009 at 11:03 am
Anybody tried to use this w/ will_paginate? The “next” icon doesn’t work.
Please advice.
rob Says:
July 29th, 2009 at 11:34 pm
Had to define a show action within PeopleController to get it to work, as follows:
def grid_data
```
  end

 def show
    @people = Person.all(:order => "#{params[:sidx]} #{params[:sord]}")
      respond_to do |format|
        format.xml { render :partial => 'griddata.xml.builder', :layout => false }
      end
 end
```
Control was never passed to the grid_data method at all, so I removed the logic altogether from it.

routes.rb contains both
map.resources :people
map.resources :people, :collection => {:grid_data => :get}

Any ideas what is going on ?
Senling Says:
August 3rd, 2009 at 6:01 am
Thanks for the great tutorial. This demo is working nicely in my application without error.

How to use pagination in this application?. Any idea.
Isaac Says:
August 5th, 2009 at 11:08 pm
how do I change the cell format in terms of integer value?
I want my numbers to be classified in 000 unit. ie the comma on every 1000th unit.
eg 1000 <- 1,000

please help
Isaac Says:
August 5th, 2009 at 11:09 pm
the arrow should me the other way 1000-> 1,000
cheers
Lavere Says:
October 19th, 2009 at 9:09 am
Bless this site for your assistance.
jon Says:
December 6th, 2009 at 11:55 pm
i find your plugin very intrusive and dont appreciate you’re moving all these files into my app espeically without asking me, including copies of jqgrid, which i already had installed, css files, and more. Then it didnt take long to realize you hardcode view parameters in the config/ yaml file, violating the mvc paradigm and app structure, in my opinion. Thanks for your interesting work, but no thanks on your implementation.
JavaScript grid editor: I want to be Excel « Eltit Golb Says:
January 18th, 2010 at 7:37 am
[...] Supports pagination, search, sort and even edit. There are two specific versions for PHP and .NET that drastically reduce the server-side implementation effort. Loading data is supported in multiple ways through XML, JSON or JS arrays and examples are supplied for PHP and MySql. There is a third party Ruby example here. [...]
ben Says:
January 26th, 2010 at 3:15 pm
I got it working, but… what if my People-class has an association to e.g. pets, and pets has race, birthday, name. Now I want to show a table with people.firstname, people.lastname, people.pet.name?

Right now rails fails after asking the database “SELECT * FROM people ORDER BY pet.name desc”. I understand that this fails, but I don’t know how to fix this

Could you please help me out with an example?

thanks!
ben

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