Thanks to James and the others for contributing to this discussion. There are some good thoughts. Also some great ones from the AJUG list.
The reason, which I failed to explain clearly in the first post for a 'stack' is that the first lookup might not be the only leap out from that form. ie Order Form, partially filled in. --> Search for Customer -----> Customer not there, add customer --------> Search for Customer type to add to customer (if there are 1Mills of them, requires request/response browser) ------------> Customer Type not there, add customer type --------> Select Customer type for partially filled customer form and return to customer form -----> Finish entering customer form and save. ---> Select newly entered customer to add to partiall filled order header. --> Phew! Now finish the order Form!!! Does this explain the need for a 'stack'? This sort of thing is an absolute requirement in an ERP style app. It's actually easy stuff if writing GUI, just icky in web. Hence the question... Thanks again to those who chipped in. I'll try to work within the normal HTML request response I think and use a 'session' object in Struts to hold state for the stack. Thanks Stuart On Fri, 2004-08-13 at 16:26, James Gregory wrote: > On Fri, 2004-08-13 at 16:13 +1000, Stuart Guthrie wrote: > > > I'm all ears, unless I hear otherwise, I'll probably write the 'stack' > > technology. > > I don't know that it's a "stack" problem. I can think of two ways to do > it: > > 1. Use the zany xml-rpc stuff in Javascript to do the query. This sounds > like a nice idea in theory but I don't know how compatible it would be. > Anyone played with this? > > 2. Have your lookup butt submit the data and set some magical flag that > says "I'm only searching, don't act on this data", which has the side > affect of committing your input to session data or whatever, so that it > can be used for default values the next time the page is loaded You'd do > the lookup when sending back your default data. Make your magic variable > a hidden input and have the 'lookup' button re-set that hidden variable > and then call submit on the form. > > I've not explained that very clearly, but hopefully you'll get the gist > of it. Ask if you need clarification. > > HTH, > > James. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
