On Wednesday 29 January 2003 04:17, Petre Agenbag wrote:
> > > "save" their forms on their systems as a)
> > > backup/proof that they have filled it in and b)
> > > for their records for future use and c) the hope
> > > is that it would also allow for a reliable method
> > > to complete the form off-line and then submit it
> > > when online again.
> This is exactly what I'm looking to do; but my problem remains: I don't
> know what the best solution is.
> The problem is clear: the users actually need an electronic copy of the
> data they submit; they must revisit certain issues annually, and would
> need to access the data they submitted the previous year; either for
> review purposes, or to make the new submission a speedy matter of simply
> changing the details that are different from last year.
> It's much like a normal office scenario: each person works on Word docs
> that need to be shared with others, yet needs to be editable and must be
> saved etc, BUT the difference here is that the data of all the
> collective sources must be entered into a central db. So the "non
> technical" solution would be for the users to do the forms in "word",
> then fax it to the central office, where you have a temp type the data
> into the db... we can't have that now...
> Any ideas?
>
> PS, I don't think cookies are going to do this. Remember, the user needs
> to be able to access and re-submit the form at any stage.
As has already been pointed out, saving the form data on the user's computer
is a _bad_ idea and provides no assurance to either party. There is no way to
prove that the data saved is what the user submitted.
So to satisfy (a), you can do this: after the user has submitted the data,
write them out to a textfile and GPG/PGP sign it, then let the user download
that signed file. You can do something similar using md5() as well (don't
forget to add a "secret").
--
Jason Wong -> Gremlins Associates -> www.gremlins.biz
Open Source Software Systems Integrators
* Web Design & Hosting * Internet & Intranet Applications Development *
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