Rails, javascript not loading after clicking through link_to helper

Question

I'm having some trouble loading my javascript when I use a link_to helper in rails. When I either manually enter the url with 'localhost:3000/products/new' or reload the page, the javascript loads, but when I go through a link as written below, the jQuery $(document).ready will not load on the new page.

Link_to, javascript does not load when I click this link:

<%= link_to "New Product", new_product_path %>

products.js file

$(document).ready(function() {
    alert("test");
});

Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Are you using Rails 4? (Find out by doing rails -v in your console)

This issue is probably due to the newly added Turbolinks gem. It makes your application behave like a single page JavaScript application. It has a few benefits ( it's faster ), but it unfortunately breaks some existing events like $(document).ready() because the page is never reloaded. That would explain why the JavaScript works when you directly load the URL, but not when you navigate to it through a link_to .

Here's a RailsCast about Turbolinks.

There are a couple solutions. You can use jquery.turbolinks as a drop-in fix, or you can switch your $(document).ready() statement to instead use the Turbolinks 'page:change' event:

$(document).on('page:change', function() {
    // your stuff here
});

Alternatively, you could do something like this for compatibility with regular page loads as well as Turbolinks:

var ready = function() {
    // do stuff here.
};

$(document).ready(ready);
$(document).on('page:change', ready);

If you are using Ruby on Rails >5 (you can check by running rails -v in the console) use 'turbolinks:load' instead of 'page:change'

$(document).on('turbolinks:load', ready); 

Answer 2

I got the same probleme but jquery.turbolinks doesn't helped. I noticed that I have to override the GET method.

There is my sample :

<%= link_to 'Edit', edit_interpreter_path(@interpreter), method: :get %>

Answer 3

If you are on rails 5 instead of 'page:change' you should use 'turbolinks:load' like this:

$(document).on('turbolinks:load', function() {
  // Should be called at each visit
})

Source: https://stackoverflow.com/a/36110790

Answer 4

You can also wrap your link with a div that specifies data-no-turbolink.

Example:

<div id="some-div" data-no-turbolink>
    <a href="/">Home (without Turbolinks)</a>
</div>

Source: https://github.com/rails/turbolinks

Answer 5

Make sure you don't have any inline <script> tags. (Inline script tags are bad with turbolinks).

Answer 6

FWIW, from the Turbolinks docs , the more appropriate event to capture instead of the $(document).ready is page:change .

page:load has a caveat that it doesn't fire on cache reloads...

A new body element has been loaded into the DOM. Does not fire on partial replacement or when a page is restored from cache, so as not to fire twice on the same body.

And since Turbolinks is just switching the view, page:change is more appropriate.

Answer 7

The solution that solved my issue was adding this meta property.

<meta name="turbolinks-visit-control" content="reload">

This ensures visits to a certain page will always trigger a full reload.

This was incredibly useful for working on a solution to solve the issue I was having with this, https://github.com/turbolinks/turbolinks#reloading-when-assets-change .

Answer 8

If your link_to js is working after reload so it should be a turbolink issue you can use turbolink 'false' on that link_to like for ex:

<%= link_to "Home", home_path, data: { turbolinks: false } %>