Ruby on Rails: link_to javascript

Question

<% @services.each do |service| %>
    <div class="widget-content nopadding">
        <ul class="activity-list">
            <li>
                <%= link_to service.company.name, "#", :id => 'specific_service' %>
            </li>
        </ul>

    </div>
<% end %>

So, I have a list of various services which all have an id. the link_to displays the service's company name which performs the 'specific_service' javascript function. But I want it to display unique data according to the service's id. How do I pass in the service.id to the link_to in order for the controller to have access to the correct service?

EDIT

$('#specific_service').click(function(){
    var id = $(this).data('id');
    var _url = '<%= dashboard_specific_service_path(:format => :js) %>?start_date=' + encodeURI($('#start_date').val()) + '&end_date=' + encodeURI($('#end_date').val()) + '&service_id=' + id;
    $.ajax({
      type: 'GET',
      url: _url,
      dataType : 'script'
    });
});

This is my javascript function which invokes a file called 'specific_service.js.erb' which would then render a partial called 'specific_service'. The thing is I don't know if I'm using the var id correctly.

Answer 1

You can use data- attributes to pass arbitrary values to a HTML element:

link_to service.company.name,           # e.g. "ACME"
        '#',
        :class => 'specific_service', 
        :data => {:id => service.id}    # e.g. 12345

which will result in something like this:

<a href="#" class="specific_service" data-id="12345">ACME</a>

this can be retrieved inside the Javascript, eg with jQuery:

$('.specific_service').click(function() {
  var id = $(this).data('id');

  // now do something with the id
});

note that i used :class not :id because the element can occur multiple times.