I would like to return a list/combobox from an ajax request ("Which on of these do you like?" type thing). I would like to write that little snippet in HAML, which converts it to HTML, but when I do, the page goes blank. I'm assuming this is because the HTML isn't escaped.

Is there a way to escape HAML so I can do $("#mydiv").html(response);?

Here's the method:

post "/something" do
  # process...
  haml :"partials/_select", :layout => false, :locals => {:collection => choices}
end

... the haml template:

%select
    - collection.each do |item|
        %option{:value => item.to_s}= item.to_s

... and the javascript:

success: function(responseText, statusText, xhr, $form) {
    $(".dialog_content").append(responseText);
}

I have tried the sinatra_more plugin and the escape_javascript method, but there's problems with the haml buffer in sinatra. Any ideas?