Custom Confirm Dialog For Turbo and Rails

Rails Designer - May 14 - - Dev Community

This article was originally published on Rails Designer.


With Turbo it is pretty straightforward to customize the browser's confirmation dialog. Rails Designer has just released a new set of utilities that includes a custom confirmation dialog packed with three great-looking themes.

Light Theme

This is the default “theme”. Works well for most apps.

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Light Glass Theme

Similar to the light theme, but with a glass-like effect. Subtle, but looks cool with really visual apps.

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Dark Theme

I like to use dark elements like these in an otherwise light application.

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Besides the message, you can also set the “confirm” and the “cancel” button labels. This is how you would use it in your Rails app:

button_to "Delete…",
filters_path(filter),
  method: :delete,
  data: {
    turbo_method: "delete",
    turbo_confirm: "Really delete this filter?",
    turbo_confirm_confirm_label: "Yes, delete",
    turbo_confirm_cancel_label: "No, go back",
  }
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(Note: Rails Designer's version also accepts the theme attribute).


Adding your own custom dialog is just a few lines of code. First customize Turbo Drive's confirmation handling, using its Turbo.setConfirmMethod with a modal that resolves actions based on user clicks on "commit" or "cancel" buttons. The once: true means they each are configured for a single use.

// app/javascript/application.js
Turbo.setConfirmMethod((message, element) => {
  const dialog = insertConfirmModal(message, element);

  return new Promise((resolve) => {
    dialog.querySelector("[data-behavior='cancel']").addEventListener("click", () => {
      dialog.remove();

      resolve(false);
    }, { once: true })
    dialog.querySelector("[data-behavior='commit']").addEventListener("click", () => {
      dialog.remove();

      resolve(true);
    }, { once: true })
  })
})
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Then the insertConfirmModal() function could look a bit like this.

// app/javascript/application.js
function insertConfirmModal(message, element) {
content = `
  <div id="confirm-modal">
    ${message}
    <button data-behavior="commit">Confirm</button>
    <button data-behavior="cancel">Cancel</button>
  </div>
`

  document.body.insertAdjacentHTML('beforeend', content);
  document.activeElement.blur();

  return document.getElementById("confirm-modal");
}
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It inserts a confirmation modal (#confirm-modal) into the webpage and removes focus from the currently active element, returning this newly created modal element.

Of course it needs a bit of styling, but as you can see from above examples you can style it however you want!

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