what is the easiest way in rails 3 to to ask "Are you sure you want to do that?" when the user clicks on a link?
the link in this case overwrites some data with a new value. It's a simple link_to (GET) back to the same controller method, with a param[] added.
EDIT:
<%= link_to "Do something", {:controller => "foo", :action => "bar"}, :confirm => "Are you sure you want to do that?" %>
For those like me that came here but are on Rails 4/5:
link_to "Title", some_path, data: { confirm: "Are you sure?" }
The documentation
There is a :confirm
option:
link_to "Visit Other Site", "http://www.rubyonrails.org/", :confirm => "Are you sure?"
# => <a href="http://www.rubyonrails.org/" data-confirm="Are you sure?"">Visit Other Site</a>
You should have unobtrusive JavaScript driver like this one for JQuery. It's pretty simple to setup.
Details are in Rails API.
For more details about UJS in Rails 3 you can follow this tutorial.