Re: Saving form data into session before leaving a page

Nathan Rixham wrote:

Peter Lind wrote:

On 13 April 2010 17:27, Paul M Foster<paulf@quillandmouse.com> wrote:

On Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 03:20:23PM +0200, Merlin Morgenstern wrote:

Hello everybody, I have form where users enter data to be saved in a db. How can I make php save the form data into a session before the user leaves the page without pressing the submit button? Some members leave the page and return afterwards wondering where their already entered data is.

I hate to be a contrarian (not really), but there is a paradigm for using web forms. If you want the internet to save your data, you have to press the little button. If you don't, then it won't be saved. Not hard to figure out, not hard to do. If you have to go do something else while you're in the middle of a form, open a new tab/window and do it. When you come back to your original form, the data will still be there (but again, not *saved* until you hit the little button). Sorry, I just get cranky with people who won't follow the rules.

There are rules and then there's stupidity based on tradition. The fact that websites previously threw away whatever work you had done because you automatically got logged out of your session after half an hour of typing does not mean you should call this a rule that should be adhere to. Google figured it out and did so well: backup automatically and let the user discard manually - not the other way round that leads to lost work. Apart from that, I note that the OP has seemingly managed to solve the problem and all these emails are rather pointless.

Concur, and this is nothing to do with the web; http only constrains that the data should be POSTed or PUT; not /when/ a save action is triggered. Functionality is in the realm of the application, and if the client application (in this case the web page) determines that information should be iteratively saved, then that's what it should do. see google docs, gmail etc for real world examples.

And a few BANK sites could do with considering waring people that they will time out before you have time to actually write in their message box for on-line emails which you have to use since they will not accept off-line ones. I had a complex message FROM them to answer - and save just told me the seesion had timed out! Bank solution - I should have copied their message to a word processor, and then copied the answer back later ... perhaps they should add that with a warning when trying to use their email page ;) -- Lester Caine - G8HFL ----------------------------- Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/ Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk// Firebird - http://www.firebirdsql.org/index.php