I included jQuery by installing the jRails plugin, which seems nice because you can continue using rails’ ajax helpers. But when I tried to implement a more special functionality by using the $.ajax function it proved impossible to set the Accept header for my request. Neither using the dataType option nor by setting it directly in a beforeSend function. The Accept header always read:
text/javascript, text/html, application/xml, text/xml, */*
I was about to uninstall and hate jQuery for the rest of my life.
By coincidence I took a look at jrails.js which is a part of the jRails plugin:
(function($)
{
$().ajaxSend(
function(a,xhr,s){
xhr.setRequestHeader("Accept","text/javascript, text/html, application/xml, text/xml, */*")
}
)
}
)(jQuery);
[...]WTF? Is that documented anywhere?
This hard coded shit stuff breaks rails’ respond_to functionality, doesn’t it?t
To be fair, it works if you use extensions to determine what datatype you expect. (Like /things/1.js)
But I don’t do that when I build a custom ajax request where I can set the Accept header directly.
Update:
Some research on the topic “accept header vs. extension” showed that in terms of cross browser compatibility I should favor the extension approach. And I’m not surprised it’s Microsoft’s fault 
