> This is a general 'how do you do it if you do it' > question about web application design.
As opposed to a "how do you do it if you don't do it" question- which is much easier to answer, the answer is simply "you don't do it" :-) > Web Form: > ----------------------------------------- > ORDER HEADER > Order No: 0010 > Order Date: 15/08/2004 > Customer: ______ <LOOKUP CUSTOMER> > Customer Name: ? > ----------------------------------------- > So the user has entered a new order date and > requests the <LOOKUP > CUSTOMER> button to search the 1,000,000 customers > in the database. > (Note, I picked a cool million deliberately to stop > the 'just use a > combo' suggestions) Very good idea not to use a combo, I once saw a webpage with a combo list of all usernames in a large organisation and there were just under 40,000 of them. Not the best thing to put into a select list. > The customer is found and selected. The user is > returned to this form in > exactly the same 'state' they left it. ie with the > date entered as > 15/08/2004, except their customer code is now filled > in. As is the > Customer name. Think "self calling CGI". A self calling CGI has a HTML form with the action target the same script. The script works out whether it's been called the first time (to display the form) or the second time (to look up the customer name) based on whether the field variable is present. Self calling CGIs are a standard CGI programming technique. > - Some sort of 'stack' where the state is maintained > in a 'level' of the > stack with all the form values from the web page. > The user goes off and > searches on the next level of the 'stack' and once > sorted, pulls (or is > it pops) the stack back to the previous 'level' and > re-populates the > form. I wouldn't use the terms "stack" and "level" here, it's not really a stack based application. You're better off thinking in terms of web pages, page 1, page 2 etc. So you've got your start page then you've got your second page with the customer page displayed and so on. Have fun, Stuart. Find local movie times and trailers on Yahoo! Movies. http://au.movies.yahoo.com -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
