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keeping output to print on another page

Posted: Fri Jun 03, 2005 5:33 am
by malcolmboston
ok, im basically looking at a nice way of passing results from page 1 to page 3 for eg.

page 1) Search form
page 2) go to a page saying "searching our database" (meta refresh to p3)
page 3) print "results";

i have thought of a few methods but they all have downsides

+ hold in a temp cookie (cookies can be disabled)
+ hold in a session var (no point in instantiating a session for this imo)
+ use GET parameter (unsafe)
+ use javascript auto post data from P2 (unsafe, can be circumvented)

any ideas?

Posted: Fri Jun 03, 2005 5:41 am
by JayBird
why even have page 2? that kind of thing just usually does my head in..."take me to the results already!" :lol:

Posted: Fri Jun 03, 2005 5:48 am
by malcolmboston
mark, i absolutely agree with you, i also hate this because in my opinion it just slows down the browsing experience, however this has been requested, thyey see it as a bit of a "noob" feature.

basically, its crap i know, but i need to know the best way of doing it, i could do it in many ways but theres too many pitfalls with each.

What im looking for, for eg. is something like hotscripts.com

Posted: Fri Jun 03, 2005 6:09 am
by patrikG
I'd use GET. Can't really see why it should be unsafe if you have a proper filter in place.

Posted: Fri Jun 03, 2005 6:10 am
by wwwapu
malcolmboston wrote:... i also hate this ... its crap i know...
Isn't serving the customers a delight :D

The ways you listed maybe the cookie is the best. You can always state that this service requires cookies.

Posted: Fri Jun 03, 2005 6:17 am
by phpScott
why not a form and hidden input types on page 2, the form can be post and know one would know without looking at the view source.

in fact if you wanted you probably could produce the query on page 1 put it onto page 2 in the form then when that page gets submitted it pass along the query to page 3. unsafe i know but just another thought.

Posted: Fri Jun 03, 2005 6:46 am
by artexercise
What about faking a page 2?

Put the "searching because I have to..." message in a div statment and give it a visibility style of "visible". If you declare this in the header and at the beginning of the body tag add an onLoad variable which points to a function that hides the "waiting..." statement and makes visible the valuable information kept neatly in another div.

That way you don't have to page stuff through a useless page, hide variables, etc...

JOE--

Posted: Fri Jun 03, 2005 10:22 am
by timvw
This is how the flow in my pages is usually set up:

(1) Present user a list with all the records (well, at least a page - pagination)
(2) Present a screen that allows the user to input limitations
(3) Go back to (1) but add the limitations to the WHERE clause

Posted: Fri Jun 03, 2005 10:48 am
by malcolmboston
malcolmboston wrote:i absolutely agree with you, i also hate this because in my opinion it just slows down the browsing experience, however this has been requested, they see it as a bit of a "noob" feature.
It has to be done