I agree on leveraging your position to guide this thing. Here you've added
the requirement of being able to revisit the data in a year.
Why not simply have them fill out the form, put it in the database and then
use another page with queries to draw the data into a similar template and
change it as needed? Simple forms should handle this just fine, and you can
require passwords to the data.
As far as filling it out online, let them pull up the form, fill it out and
reconnect, then press submit.
Wouldn't this cover what you want?
Petre Agenbag
[EMAIL PROTECTED]To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
za cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [PHP] best way to save
form data on user side
01/28/2003 03:17
PM
Hi Chris
On Tue, 2003-01-28 at 22:09, Chris Shiflett wrote:
--- Petre Agenbag [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I have a rather annoying problem regarding forms.
I have built an app that allows the users to fill
in a rather large form (much like a claim form)
and then have the data pumped into a mysql db.
The problem is: the users want to be able to
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.
Well, this sounds like a bad idea in general, but if you
have no choice in the matter, I suppose cookies can fulfill
the need.
Anything you implement like this is going to lessen the
security of the data, because rather than the client
sending it to you once, you are going to expose it over the
Internet several times. If this risk is acceptable for
whatever reason, then cookies are probably no less secure
for this data than anything else.
Normally, I would highly recommend *not* storing client
data on cookies, because that opens you up to several types
of attacks, but you can accomplish what you want to do with
this method. Only punish those who want this feature by
setting these cookies only for those who choose to save
this data locally. You could help the situation by
encrypting the data in your cookies, so that only
presentation attacks are a concern, but your users wouldn't
be able to easily look at their data as verification of
anything.
My recommendation is to leverage your position as the
technical expert to advise a more proper solution, one that
you agree to, not them. They should not be consulted
regarding application design unless they have experience
with it. Rather, they should be describing their needs and
let you (or the technical lead / project manager) do the
technical design.
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.
Good luck to you.
Chris
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