RJS concurrency problems with lists

Rails
1

Folks,

I’m using RJS to add and remove rows from a list of items. Ideally,
when the list is empty, there should be a single row “You have no
items”, otherwise the list looks confusing with the header but no
items. Does anyone have a recipe for doing this?

Options include:

  1. Update add and remove RJS templates to query the DB to get the item
    count, and remove/add the special row as necessary. Has concurrency
    issues.

  2. When the page is initialized, put the display item count into the
    session, and update add/remove actions to keep it up-to-date. Update
    RJS templates as per option 1.

  3. Implement a javascript function that takes the id of a list and
    iterates over its children, inserting the “You have no items” row if
    none.

I’m leaning towards option 2, but if there is a cleaner approach that
would be awesome.

Cheers,
Chris

2

Chris,

The “you have no items” row could always be there. Just style it with
relative positioning such that it sits under (z-index) the first
real row of your list.

Cheers,
Ken

3

Works perfectly. Thanks!

Cheers,
Chris