writing current page to database/file

[chemlight]

I'm writing a page that is dynamically created. I'm using PHP sessions, and have run into the issue of sessions timing out when someone walks away from their computer - but they have completed a large amount of work on one page. I initially thought to use AJAX to pass the current pages information to a PHP page that would just input the information into the database. The issue was, passing the page information using the GET method didn't work with larger amounts of information.

So, what I want to see if I can do, is use AJAX to generate the information to an XML file.

Thanks!

--My apolgogies. I was doing some more research, and found out that AJAX Supports the POST method, which should get me what I need--

(btw, tried searching the bytes.com for this question, but the search bar wasn't working, so, my apologies if this is answered somewhere else)

[acoder]

Yes. Are you making the Ajax request onunload?

[chemlight]

No. It actually saves their work every 15 minutes, and whenever the save button is pressed. I guess the way I'm thinking is that I don't want anything saved if they are finished with their work (there is a button to click to generate the next page of information). So, once that button is pressed, it will wipe the saved information on the database, and stop the save function, to ensure that no work is duplicated.

I switched to using POST method to pass the AJAX, but still found a limitation with POST (about 85000 characters with some testing). My solution is to actually take the information, and split it up into multiple AJAX calls with javascript regular expressions, with the PHP page concatinating the results into the correct field on the table. Still haven't tested it, and I may end up using multiple rows for a page if I have to, but that would complicate things a bit, since each user has a row in the table.

[acoder]

If size is a problem, perhaps you should consider splitting up the page into a number of smaller pages. However, I don't think POST has a size limit. That would depend on your settings, but it should be able to cope with more than 85Kb.

[bugboy]

Maybe this would help?

serialize-javascript-objects-to-xml

[chemlight]

My biggest issue with size was a series of drop down boxes, that could contain very large lists. I found the solution to be to not inlcude the drop down boxes in the save. I haven't had any issues since then.