On 5/18/2014 1:43 AM, Michael B Allen wrote:
Hi All,
Occasionally I need to do a little web programming and I must admit
after almost 2 decades I still find myself searching for a better way
to handle HTML forms. I blame this mostly on the W3C's invalid
assumption that HTML is for rendering documents and not building
applications. But putting blame aside, I would like to ask the list to
share their best form processing techniques.
There's a particular scenario that bugs me about forms which is that
it is increasingly rare that you have a bunch of fields with just a
submit button. There are usually multiple possible operations that
build up and modify the data before it's submitted. A good example of
this is a shopping cart where there is one form but commands for
removing and item, updating quantities, applying a discount code and
submitting the cart. But the form only has one action.
Currently I've been just using hidden fields and then call a
javascript function to fill in the hidden fields with the desired data
for the particular command and submit the form.
Ideas?
Hi!
The only ideas I have is to have items listed in divs and then use js to hide
the div if the action on that item is 'remove'. Other than that, rather than
deal with hidden fields that really aren't that hidden write everything you
need to know to the session cookie. HTML5 offers even more options now. Not
sure if that is a better way, but it is at least a different way and maybe it
helps.
HTML was never intended as application programming language and I don't see
that as a problem. You do want to separate business logic from presentation
even when it often blends together using javascript. Even js is a cheat
because browser based apps are by design client/server apps. The client
requests and the server responds. I agree that js makes pages more usable and
allows for pretty neat stuff, but it breaks the underlying model and often
enough I encounter problems because the server has no idea what the client is
doing, sometimes even so much so that the server lets the session time out
although the user is actively using the app, but all interactions are client
side.
David
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