[thelist] Form Submission, Saving Info to Disk

[Paola Kathuria]

Michael Roberto wrote:
> Scenario:  Ever submit a form, maybe a lengthy one,
> get an error message on the submission page, go back to the
> main form page, and find all the information gone?  I'm sure
> this has happened to most people.
> 
> My specific scenario, I was writing a rather long form entry in
> a textarea, I submitted the form got an error, returned and it
> was blank.

I haven't seen a reply to this yet.

This is on the edge of hand-waving for me, but I am fairly sure
that the form contents are not automatically held anywhere that
you can get hold of.  The program called in the form action is
the thing that has access to all the form contents.  It's then
in memory, but can be written to a file, sent in e-mail, or
used when redisplaying the form

On a registration form for a workshop this year I set it up
so thar the form was repopulated after showing any error
messages.  If the form is sucessfully completed, the form
contents then appear on the ack page in a structured format.
The workshop has been and gone but I've uploaded a demo
version of the form if you want to see that it is possible
to do.  It's at http://www.ppig.org/workshops/evolt-form.lml

As for your first scenario, if you complete part of a form
but don't submit it (or press any "save" buttons) then click
to another page, then click a link back to the form, the form
*will* be empty.  As far as I know, nothing knows what you
typed in to the form if a program isn't sent any of it.

If you click the Back button to a partially-completed form,
sometimes the form contents are there and sometimes not for
depending on the site.  I've suspected that this is to do
with the way the site's or page's - I'm not really sure.


Paola