Thanks Ben, great answer. The "modern" Web2.0 version is to render the entire blank table and rest of page as the first request and then use JavaScript to fill in each cell. This might not answer the original post's problem, since it requires more than just format change serverside, but doesn't require paginating, just passing the data as XML or JSON separate from format.
This has network overhead (HTTP roundtrip per JS request) but gives users something to see. One could use one of the JSON modules on CPAN to generate the replies, or even a single big XML/JSON reply that maps to the whole table, and some nice JS routine parses and stuffs cell-per-cell for you. Easiest would be a CPAN module that matches a JS library so you have browserside support. Haven't played with that yet. In a similar vein, but very minimalist, my page http://ema.arrl.org/fd/history/analysis.html initially renders a generic background and then replaces it with a (pre-computed) graph requested in the form. After page finishes render, onload="change_pix(); picks up the default values in theform's pulldowns and changes it. No JSON marshalling or parsing is required since graphics are offline computed with Perl Imager, Text::CSV, and Treemap (as seen on Perl Advent Calendar http://perladvent.pm.org/2006/3/ ),so JS just computes compound name of selected statistical graphic. In codesample below, FD2002-pin.gif is the initial "blank" background, forcibly scaled to the size of the real graphs. <script> <!-- function change_pix() { var a_file = "data/fd_" +theform.year.value+"_" +theform.where.value+"_" +theform.how.value+".png"; var caption_str = "Analysis for "+theform.where.value+" in "+theform.year.value+" by "+theform.how.value; document.getElementById("caption").innerHTML = caption_str; document.getElementById("treemap").src = a_file return; } --> </script> ... <BODY onload="change_pix();"> ... <img name="treemap" id="treemap" src="FD2002-pin.gif" width="800" height="600"> [This JS code is not from $DayJob but from EMA.ARRL.ORG volunteer work and the Perl Advent Calendar. (The Perl code was reused for a POC at $DayJob too.)] _______________________________________________ Boston-pm mailing list [email protected] http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
