I've got a php database driven website and I want to implement a feature where there is a section on the navigation bar which displays a history of previous pages visited (with their urls) on the website. I plan on using a $_SESSION array to store this list.
That should be easy enough, but I also want to have a delete button next to every history entry so the user can remove pages from the history bar. The problem with this is that to update the $_SESSION array and remove the entry, it will need to reload the page, and if the user is on a page such as a search results page it will come up with errors because the page generated relies on a submitted form. There would be other examples of this issue on other pages.
I'd rather not have to store the search etc. in a session variable to get around this so was wondering if there would be some way of using javascript to delete the entry on the history bar and then somehow update the php session variable from the javascript when the user navigates away from or refreshes the page... but I'm not sure how the js could change the php session variable. Could this work or is there another solution?
You can follow below steps:
Make an ajax call to a PHP file and destroy SESSION variables related to user's page visited history.
On ajax success, hide / remove HTML elements or container that display page history URLs on the web page using JavaScript.
Since your search page is dependent on POST values, this will ensure that user's page history is cleared without the need to refresh the page. When user navigates to some other link, page will get reloaded and user will not get older links.
Hope this helps!
You can use AJAX, for example if you push logout button ajax will send information to the server side but php will do all the work of destroying that session. The are many examples of ajax on stackoverflow.
Related
I have a single webpage that uses an API to query backend for data, which is returned and plotted in a few figures. Backend is Node.js with Express.
The appearance of the figures is controlled through a set of JS functions that are loaded when the page initially loads.
After the user has been on the page for 30 seconds, I want to ask them to login or register by displaying a modal over the page.
If the login is successful, I'd like to close the modal and have new functionality available to the user, including changing the behavior of the original JS functions that were loaded when the user first arrived. But, I'd like to do this without reloading a new page with a separate set of JS functions.
I'm a relative newbie at this and have been having a hard time figuring out the right way to accomplish this.
I thought maybe there was a way to update the original JS function file by submitting an API get request and using the response to overwrite replace/overwrite the non-authenticated version. Then user would have access to new functionality without having reloaded the page.
But, I can't seem to find anything that would support this as the correct approach, or even whether this would be possible.
Really need help on which direction to go.
I have a ruby on rails app and I want to detect user moving to different domain page
while in model creating wizard.
I stored model-data to DB at first-step of wizard and redirect_to second-step of wizard.
And I want to destroy it if user moving to different domain page while in second-step.
I already find a way to hook onbeforeload event to show warning to user.
But I want to warn it only if user moving to different domain page but not to third-step.
And if user want to moving different domain page then I want to destroy stored data.
What is a best solution to do this? Is there any way to detect where user want to go?
EDIT:
In second-step I want to create model from user upload file(ajax upload with jQuery File Uploader) and associate with first-step's model. So if I can get which id will assign to first-step's model then I can easily associate with it. This is why I want to store data in first-step.
And I don't want to expire unfineshed model until user explicitly leaving wizard.
Then can I detect whether user still opening wizard and just stopping very long time or
already leaving wizard page?
(I want to build app just like a desktop application so user can have unsaved file until explicity leaving wizard on multiple browser window)
That's is not possible. Once your page is unloaded you cannot do anything else. If the user is loading another domain page then that domain has control over the page, not you.
What you should do is store the data of the wizard pages not in db but on session state or even in a cookie, this is the good practice. Then, when user reach the final step of the wizard you read the data from cookie/session and write to db at once.
You cannot determine the user's intended destination within the onbeforeunload event, or any other. You also can't stop a user's request to load another page and instead redirect them to some destroy action before sending them off on their way.
If you are content with storing data into the database on each step as the user progresses through your wizard, you can look into setting up a cron job to run a rake task you create which can go through and delete incomplete wizards that are older than a certain age.
The cron (or equivalent) actually is something I'd consider doing even if you could detect a user leaving your site.
I have a situation where I have a page with tabs to hold multiple buttons for various functions. Each tab is for a different set of functionality (e.g. customers, orders and admin).
The way it was originally designed was I load all of the tabs and all of their buttons. The buttons shown is dependant on who is logged on.
Additionally, if a user clicks on a function it loads the code for that page, replacing the buttons in that tab as well as all of the code for the other tabs. I don't think this is very efficient and I would guess it would be better to load the content for the tabs using AJAX.
What would be the best way to accomplish this behaviour and make the code more responsive? My thought is that I would store the html that goes inside of the tab divs in the session variables, so I would only need to get the code once when the user logs on and then just serve it back to the user based on the currently selected tab.
To save on session you must have on your mine that:
The session data are saved all together, and read all together on the start reading of every page load, and write all together on the end of every page read. And the session lock all users, so if you add too much data and create a delay to read and write on the session, this can possible affect the users on your site. Imaging to create a big html page data that you save on session and its about 300k, and then you make the same 10 times, then the session data will be 3M that must reads and writes all the time.
So its like to add an extra data that follow the user session.
Its better if its possible to make your custom cache on a database, and save this just using the session key id, and load them only when the user enters that page, save it only when user change it.
From the other hand if you do not have many users, and you need to make it quick, or you do not have database connection, or is difficult to make a small custom cache, then use the session for one or two data of that.
I have a situation where for some reason a Web page might refresh while a user is filling out a form. The unwanted effect is to wipe out the data already entered by the user.
Is there a solution to have the form data persist on page refresh?
The form includes text input and selects.
You say "I have a situation where for some reason a Web page might refresh", do you mean that the user might refresh the page, or is it some other script that refreshes the page? If the case is the latter, you should probably try to fix the issue that causes the refresh instead of trying to preserve the form data. If it is the former, JavaScript will probably be the solution for you.
You could listen for every keyup-event on any of the form elements. When a keyup-event is fired you serialize the form data and write it to a cookie (or a webstorage, depending on what browsers you need to support), to preserve the most up-to-date data. If the page reloads, or if the user leave the page and comes back, the cookie can be deserialized on document-ready, and you can re-populate the form with the data from the cookie. When you post the form, you make sure to also clear the cookie, to make sure the form isn't filled the next time the user loads the page.
Update
Here is a good blog post about how to use GSerializer for serialization an deserialization with JavaScript.
A suggested approach
As the user is filling out the form, have JavaScript running that caches the entered values in LocalStorage, a cookie, or a session variable via AJAX.
On page load, check for the presence of these entries, and populate the form with JavaScript.
On form submit, clear the entries.
Use HTML5 web storage- it is faster and more secure than cookies. You can check out the W3Schools website for some quick and basic samples: http://www.w3schools.com/html5/html5_webstorage.asp
I want to use Facebook's log in, and then I need to display some data related to the user, which is in my databases.
The problem is that I have several pages, and I don't want all pages to load the data using Ajax, rather I want them to be created by JSP based on the user id from the first time the user logged in. The problem is how to set the user id parameter in the server side, and keep it safe?
JavaScript can't set the session, and it is very annoying and have poor performance to load the page and then wait for the id from the Facebook session just to send it to server and process it --> send data back. This is good behavior for the first time user logged in only.
I am using Jaxcent as the framework for Ajax which is based on servlets. For some reason, I can't get to work with the session object there which only works with forms inputs. And when I tried to put a hidden filed in, it is not getting into the session, only if I type the value myself.
How do I solve this issue?
I thought about a table in the database which I could quote the session id, and userid from, but then again I have the session id in JSP but the userid in JavaScript, I can't find a way to combine them.
You could create a page that you would pass the user id (when you get it from facebook) and that page would store a cookie on the client, with the necessary redirecting of course.
You might be able to do that with AJAX to get rid of the redirection.
Just set a cookie from your JavaScript code, and read that on the server. Note that you should include the full signed request if you need definitive values, as opposed to the user being able to modify them.