This is what I am trying to implement and I don't know how to do it:
I have a few forms that users should be able to complete offline. Once the user has filled in the form they should be able to hit save and their data needs to be saved offline. Then later when they are online they can submit all the form data which was saved by hitting a button. They will be asked to log in and once they have done so their data will be saved on server.
These forms will be submitted via iPad/iPhone. The user can save multiple copies of each form.
I am looking for an HTML5/JavaScript/jQuery solution. My backend is php. I have not tried anything yet as I don't have any idea how to do this. Where do I start?
Thanks
You can provide a manifest file to provide a specific form to a user - Application cache IIRC:
http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/offline.html
Caveat - without making it a native app the user would have to have visited the website while online before they will see any forms at all
Then once the user fills this in store the results in localStorage, ready to access when online.
If the user is online, the standard page will be displayed, and you can check local Storage for any unsubmitted forms, and on submission remove from localSorage.
Check out the principles used in this tutorial, they should get you most of the way there, but you'll have to look into offline html and localStorage a lot more to get a working app:
http://sixrevisions.com/web-development/html5-iphone-app/
Hope that helps.
I don't think this is possible as an web-only solution targeting iOS, since you can't count on the forms staying up in Safari. Even if the user loaded the form in their browser ahead of time when they had an active internet connection, you can't count on Safari not trying to reload the page (which would clear the page and give a connection failure since they're offline).
Therefore, I think you have to create a native iOS app for this functionality.
If you were targeting desktops instead, you could probably accomplish this with browser plugins.
Related
I'm making a simple mobile web app where users should be able to login/authenticate to sign up for private events.
I love the way JQuery mobile looks and feels, but want PHP to do everything in the backend: Handle form processing, talk to the DB and so on.
I currently have no authentication, but want to add that.
Wrapping the current solution in Phonegap actually worked, but I suspect the authentication/session handling is going to crash with that.
My hope is that I can exchange data with a PHP script when:
- the form loads (to check for PHP user session etc), and
- a "submit" button is clicked.
I covered the submit button part, and it works. Data is sent to, and returned from my PHP processing script to the JQuery front-end.
For handling the submit event, for some reason this code worked:
$(document).ready(function(){
as opposed to an onclick thing which didn't work.
This baffles me, as I read that document.ready is an event that occurs when the document has completed loading.
Q1: Could this have something to do with me using Jquery mobile sections (
Q2: What would be the correct JQuery event/trigger to use prior to loading, to control form "context"? (based on data from backend PHP).
Q3a: Is it a viable solution to rely on PHP sessions in such a case?
Q4: Also considering that I'd like to Phonegap it...will a PHP session be able to "see" the Jquery-based, phonegap-wrapped app like a client session just like if it was someone using a web-browser?
4b. When does a Phonegap app user session "end"? (When does the user have to log in again...).
I know similar questions have been raised several times, but please consider I'm a gullible idiot that knows too little to understand which case is similar enough to mine. There are some concepts here that I need to grasp before I can decide what to investigate and ask about :-)
Here's to tolerance and understanding! Cheers!
Eivind
You can store mobile id and users id in database with flag logged_in when they first logged in. Then again if user open that app, you can check the mobile id with the record in database whether user is exists or not and if exists then whats his/her status.
Is there a way that I can read the $_POST of a website that I don't own? For example I want to auto fill someone else's form for my users when they go there, so I wanted to reverse engineer their post.
Or is there a way to auto fill a form on someone else's form?
EDIT:
Some people asked what my motives are. I'm working with a group that doesn't have the right to change a website but wants more registration, and I wanted to see if I could remake the form so it was auto-filled to make registration easier.
The short answer is NO, but, you can sniff the HTTP request.
See this question: can-ones-post-request-data-be-sniffed
Basically, if it's a simple form, you don't need to read the post data, you can simply create an identical form with the same action url and set the method to post. You can auto fill this form and send it to a different site.
You could use FireBug or simply the browsers developer tools and analyze the network tab.
You should find all relevant information in the header section.
Browsers are built NOT to allow interaction between different sources, for example an iframe of site1.com inside site2.com can't communicate with JS.
Being able to read $_POST related to another site would be a security disaster. To assist the user the browsers utilize "auto-fill". That's all you get.
If it's a limited amount of peer-sites you may however contact the respective owner of the site and ask them to add support for passing arguments to their login(?) or registration(?) form, for example:
theothersite.com/register.php?email=theEmailYouKnow
By generating this link on YOUR server you get the email to popup on the other site IF implemented by the maintainer of the other site.
I've developed a web application in PHP and MySQL. One part of the system I've been putting on hold for a while now, is allowing my users to create a simple form inside my application, and once they're done, copy and paste some code which I generate into their existing remote websites (IE: Contact Form) where this form should appear.
When visitors to their site enter their data into that "contact form" or whatever they've created, it should save the info into my application database where the users will be able to access it. It must be unobtrusive.
Is there anyone who can give me a good starting point on how to achieve this?
Im a little confused on what youre asking. Are you asking if there is a way to automatically copy the generated form to the clipboard, or how you set the form up to allow it to post data back to your own server?
If its the former, Bradley above pretty much explained it. If its the latter, then there are a couple of ways that you can go about doing it.
If you want it to submit the form without actually redirecting back to your own site, then you need to submit the form via AJAX (read XMLHttpRequest, or the $.ajax() function if youre using jQuery). The only problem here is that it violates the same origin policy since youd be submitting from a different domain. To fix this, you need to setup your webserver to allow cross domain requests so that it'll actually work.
JavaScript cannot access the clipboard to save (copy) text to memory. A general way around this is to use an invisible flash movie and place it over an input button so that 'clicking' the button triggers the flash script, which can utilize the clipboard.
I've used ZeroClipBoard in the past to do this, and I believe some of the syntax highlighting plugins out there use it as well.
http://code.google.com/p/zeroclipboard/
I have a classifieds website, where anyone (no need for login currently) can post a classified. It is PHP based.
The procedure for posting is currently like this:
click on "New Classified" --->
fill in a form of all information and hit "View classified before publishing it" --->
the form submits to a "verify classifieds" page, where users verify their inputs --->
If everything is okay in the "verify" page, then the user hits OK and the classified is published.
The above procedure isn't exactly optimized. The first page (new_classified) where the form is, is pretty good, but the second page (verify) uses x number of hidden inputs in another form, used to contain the previous pages form inputs.
Now you know how it works on my site.
The issue today is that alot of companies want to publish their classifieds, and alot of classifieds at the same time. This means they have to fill out the form again and again currently.
I am thinking about creating a login, for companies only, so that their information is automatically inputted into the form, so all they would have to do is fill out the specific classified details like "headline" and "description" etc.
How should I do this in my case? Sessions?
This means I will have to create a new MySql table (I use MySql mainly) and store company-profiles there.
So do you think converting to sessions is alot of work? Worth it? More reliable?
I have never used sessions so I wouldn't know.
As a last note, you should know that I use a picture upload tool on the first page of "new_classified". When a user choses a file to upload, the page is automatically *refreshed*, and then the image is displayed on the same page under section "images uploaded". I hope the session wont interfere with this approach.
Thanks
I think it is worth your while to do logins, and even on a very basic level it will help you to identify who is using your site etc.
This is probably a big debate around developers, what is the best way to do a good login system, whether it's basic or not doesn't matter, I think the concepts still stay the same.
In your case I would suggest session cookies along with a login table consisting of user details. This would help you to verify the user on more than one occasion during his/her visit to the site.
A login is checked against a user entry in a table and then a session cookie is created. This session you can choose to never expire also.
You can then on every step check that the user is the user that is supposed to be logged in and get the companies details by checking the username. This would make for a better query in my opinion.
Sessions aren't a lot of work and it's relatively easy to learn.
http://www.php.net/manual/en/book.session.php
http://www.9lessons.info/2010/02/php-login-script-with-encryption.html is a good example of what you can do with this. Have a look around still. There are a bunch of these great tutorials on the web.
I have been asked to write to save the data in some secure place after certain task is completed by a client.
Here my client has alot of staffs who makes data entry in online forms provided by some different vendors. After some steps the entered data generates some results. i.e after submitting the web form. Now he wants the generated results to be saved either in local computer or in some online server.
Can it be done by:
1.) Creating a local web server which sits in between the users and the online main third party server and record all the generated results?
2.) Creating a browser extension [m thinking about firefox] and forcing users to navigate via the specific browser and record all the generated results?
**I am pretty sure that second method can work as firebug is doing that only need to add some functionality to save the data.
any idea will be appreciated.
Sorry for mis-leading guys. To make more clear here are some more explanation.
a.) I am writing application to one of my client who has many staffs who enters data in abc.com website.
b.) User submits the data to abc.com.
c.) the website abc.com produces or generates some result as per input data and sends back to user.
d.) Now I need a system which will be inbetween the staffs/user and abc.com website and track the responses of abc.com and save it to some location automatically.
e.) Currently the data entry user will manually save the result to his local computer and if he/she forgets to save then we miss the result so want to do it automatically so that we wont be missing any single result.
A local webserver wouldn't really help so much because of crossdomain issues, unless you wanna go with something as JSONP. In that case, you might wanna use a signed java applet, which (assuming the user accepts the certificate) has any access an installed Java app would have, so it could potentially bind a port and server as HTTP server (I'm not sure how well this works on linux or unix).
Another idea would be to use Flash's local shared objects. Depends on how much data you want to save. You may need to make the Flash visible, so the user can see the dialog for allowing the data to be saved. You can communicate from JavaScript to Flash using ExternalInterface.
Yet the most simple thing is to give the user a permanent cookie, and save the data associated with that cookie on a web server.
greetz
back2dos
Take a look at HTML5 local storage if you don't need a lot of data to be stored or you can use local databases, see http://blog.darkcrimson.com/2010/05/local-databases/ .
You can also sync it with a server once the client is online again..