Rails/jquery passing a variable(IDs) collected in jQuery to a rails controller/action

I am new to AJAX and jQuery so please excuse me if this is kind of basic:

I implemented the great jgrid by 2dconcepts (http://www.2dconcept.com/jquery-grid-rails-plugin). Now I would like to select the data in my table with the checkbox, - get the product ids (that works fine I see the alert from the 'handleSelection') and pass it over to my custom action in the rails controller to edit the specified records (very similar to Ryan B's railscast #165). I simply have no idea how I would do that.

<script type="text/javascript">
function handleSelection(id) {
alert('Open those up?:'+id);    
}
</script>


<% title "JGRID Table" %>
<%= jqgrid("Products", "products", "/products",
[
    { :field => "id", :label => "ID", :width => 40, :resizable => false },
    { :field => "vendorname", :width => 200, :label => "vendorname", :editable => true },
    { :field => "productname", :width => 230, :label => "productname", :editable => true },
    { :field => "metakeyword", :width => 250, :label => "metakeyword", :editable => true },
    { :field => "status", :width => 100, :label => "status", :editable => true, :edittype => "select", 
        :editoptions => { :value => [["inbox","inbox"], ["todo", "todo"], ["final","final"]] } },
    { :field => "category_id", :label => "category_id", :width => 100, :resizable => false, :editable => true }
],
{ :add => true, 
    :edit => true, 
    :inline_edit => true, 
    :delete => true, 
    :edit_url => "/products/post_data",
    :rows_per_page => 30,
    :height => 270,
    :selection_handler => "handleSelection", 
    :multi_selection => true }
)%>

I think I need to put the post-request in the function and call it with something like this:

<%= button_to_function('EDIT CHECKED', 'handleSelection(id)', {
:id => "products_select_button"}) %>

But to be honest, not even that button would work, as it passes the string "products_select_button" to the function, and not the collected value...

Your help is greatly appreciated!

Val

To send parameters to your controller you can always use jQuery's post function, it's very easy to implement in any setup

$.post("products/", { id: 1, name: "John" } );

That piece of code sends the id and name parameter to your products controller with a POST. Depending on what your controller looks like different actions will recieve the POST. You can always do

rake -T

in you rails app in order to see which action that handles the POST. I don't really know what the final grid looks like but this piece of jQuery code might get you started?

$(document).ready(function() {
  $("#button").click(function() { // Submit button is pressed
    var grid_id = $("#grid").val(); // Grab value of the grid
    $.post("products/", { id : grid_id });  // Post the grid_id to your controller
  });
});