How to populate a Rails dropdown menu with a json array

Question

I have an Ant show page that displays detailed information about various types of ants. On that page there are two drop downs, one for environment: [indoor, outdoor], and on

Answer 1

It seems to me like you want to dynamically populate the dropdown box, which would lend itself to an ajax call, like this:

$('#select_box').on('change', function () {
    $.ajax({
        url: "/controller/action",
        type: 'get',
        data: $(this).serialize()
    }).done(function (data) {
        change_select(data);
    });
});

function change_select(data) {
    var json = jQuery.parseJSON(data);
    var options = [];
    json.each(function (key, index) {
        options.push({text: index, value: key});
    });
    $("#select_box").replaceOptions(options);
};

This will allow you to specify the options of the dropdown, and you can use the controller in this way:

  @food_sources = Ant.find(params[:ant_id]).product_recommendations.where(environment: params[:environment]).map(&:diet)
  respond_to do |format|
    format.json { render json: @food_sources }
  end