I fought AJAX and I won

What I wanted, stupid me, change a select box, get my node form to rebuild on an "AJAX submit" and display some changed elements. Well, AJAX does not fire form level submit handlers (this is supposedly a good thing). But, the form only rebuilds if the "rebuild" flag gets set ($form_state['rebuild']) by a submit handler and a submit handler only -- which are not fired. Opsie! While a custom form surely can do something in #process, #after_build etc a node form really wants to be rebuilt. Seems like a stalemate. If it would be a button, then the button level submit handler would help. Well:

    $form['some_select_box'][LANGUAGE_NONE] += array(
      '#ajax' => array(
        'callback' => 'my_ajax_callback',
        'wrapper' => 'some-wrapper',
      ),
      '#limit_validation_errors' => array(array('some_select_box')),
      '#executes_submit_callback' => TRUE,
      '#submit' => array('my_submit_handler')
    );

function my_submit_handler($form, &$form_state) {
  $form_state['rebuild'] = TRUE;
}

now there we are. The select box now is a submit button too!! AJAX will set the select box as the trigger element ($form_state['triggering element']) and as such this submit handler will fire, giving us a most excellent chance for a $form_state['rebuild'] = TRUE; and life is now good. While I think AJAX is fundamentally broken in D7 because of this, I have Form API and I am not afraid to use it.

Ps. make sure your radios have valid #default_value otherwise even limit_validation_errors won't help you.

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