I have a page that has a very large form. That combined with the database is optimized for flexibility rather than speed with many joins and the server is not much of a machine and can be very slow means I would like to consider if I can load the form in pieces via AJAX. My question is does that violate any of the rules for forms and tables ? The table is inside the form and each form field is a table cell. If the form and table doesn''t completely load but increases in size as each AJAX call builds it up, that seems like it would help the problem of the slow load, but I am not sure if I would break any HTML rules involving tables or forms doing it that way ? I seem to encounter these types of problems from time to time, but then I forget which thing it was after a while that the rule was about and I possibly get confused thinking the restriction is something different from what it really was. Maybe there is a good cheat sheet on what''s not allowed in HTML and the common mistakes along those lines ? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby on Rails: Talk" group. To post to this group, send email to rubyonrails-talk-/JYPxA39Uh5TLH3MbocFF+G/Ez6ZCGd0@public.gmane.org To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rubyonrails-talk+unsubscribe-/JYPxA39Uh5TLH3MbocFF+G/Ez6ZCGd0@public.gmane.org For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk?hl=en.
On Oct 29, 2011, at 5:49 AM, Jedrin wrote:> > I have a page that has a very large form. That combined with the > database is optimized for flexibility rather than speed with many > joins and the server is not much of a machine and can be very slow > means I would like to consider if I can load the form in pieces via > AJAX. My question is does that violate any of the rules for forms and > tables ? The table is inside the form and each form field is a table > cell. If the form and table doesn''t completely load but increases in > size as each AJAX call builds it up, that seems like it would help the > problem of the slow load, but I am not sure if I would break any HTML > rules involving tables or forms doing it that way ? I seem to > encounter these types of problems from time to time, but then I forget > which thing it was after a while that the rule was about and I > possibly get confused thinking the restriction is something different > from what it really was. Maybe there is a good cheat sheet on what''s > not allowed in HTML and the common mistakes along those lines ? >The basic rule for forms in HTML is that a form is a block-level element; so any element which can accept a block-level child will happily be its daddy, and any block-level element can be its direct child. This means that a form can wrap around a table, or can be contained entirely within a TD, and a form may contain a table or a div or a p or a header or a fieldset or a list. (There''s probably more, and the W3C DTD for the level of HTML you want to target would be the authoritative source for this, but think about what tags you could get away with putting as a direct child of the body tag, and that''s probably the right tag to use.) I would decouple the table cells from the individual form elements, and load only the form elements through Ajax, replacing whatever placeholder you put in the target TD. So first pass, you make up all your TDs, and fill them with a spinner gif or whatnot. Then your Ajax callbacks target each TD and replace the spinner with the resulting form element(s). If TD is too granular, say you know that each row of the table will have 10 tds, then maybe your placeholder should be a tr with a single td set to colspan 10 and the spinner in that. Then update the TR in one whack. You''ll want to put an ID on whatever element you decide to update. Walter> -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby on Rails: Talk" group. > To post to this group, send email to rubyonrails-talk-/JYPxA39Uh5TLH3MbocFF+G/Ez6ZCGd0@public.gmane.org > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rubyonrails-talk+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk?hl=en. >-- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby on Rails: Talk" group. To post to this group, send email to rubyonrails-talk-/JYPxA39Uh5TLH3MbocFF+G/Ez6ZCGd0@public.gmane.org To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rubyonrails-talk+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk?hl=en.
On Sat, Oct 29, 2011 at 05:49, Jedrin <jrubiando-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org> wrote:> I would like to consider if I can load the form in pieces via AJAX.The big question is, can you group the elements so that they are from a simpler batch of database queries? It sounds like many of the form elements, if not all of them, would be coming from the same rather complex database query. If so, then I would recommend you take these elements all together in one AJAX call, so that the database query is only done once. Very simple example: Suppose your form has a customer''s name, contact information, and order history, including the details of each order (how many of what at what price each, total, tax, shipping, grand total), and the master total of all orders. The name and order *IDs* could come from two very simple queries done in the controller. Then you could have the form, upon loading in the browser, fire off AJAX queries, one for each order to get the details. (Better yet, do it not on load, but on user request, if it''s something they don''t necessarily always need.) Upon receiving each of these you could fill in the sections, and add to the master total. Thus the order detail retrieval would be parallelized. This probably wouldn''t really be worth it, but if your situation is much hairier, something analogous may be applicable. Alternately, think about breaking up your form. -Dave -- LOOKING FOR WORK! What: Ruby (on/off Rails), Python, other modern languages. Where: Northern Virginia, Washington DC (near Orange Line), and remote work. See: davearonson.com (main) * codosaur.us (code) * dare2xl.com (excellence). Specialization is for insects. (Heinlein) - Have Pun, Will Babble! (Aronson) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby on Rails: Talk" group. To post to this group, send email to rubyonrails-talk-/JYPxA39Uh5TLH3MbocFF+G/Ez6ZCGd0@public.gmane.org To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rubyonrails-talk+unsubscribe-/JYPxA39Uh5TLH3MbocFF+G/Ez6ZCGd0@public.gmane.org For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk?hl=en.
wbsurfver-/E1597aS9LQAvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org
2011-Oct-31 12:13 UTC
Re: loading a large form in pieces via AJAX
Thanks for the ideas .. some of my records are very flexible with joins,such that I can''t be sure how may fields their are in the form or what field types there are. I figured I could guess that I wouldn''t have more than 100 fields and I could generally have an idea how many fields there was so that may not be a big deal, however when I initially do the remote_form_for(@rec) do my_form my_form is a form builder object that I seem to doubt is something I can have available on an ajax call into a partial to generate a field after the initial page load. Since when the page first loads, I don''t know for which fields I would need a text_area versus a text_field, those details are ideally figured out when I would load the field via ajax. I could try to figure that out ahead of time, but if I have older records where the format layout has changed, those would error out. Possibly the set up work to get this scheme to work is a bit more than I anticipated, though it may still be worth doing .. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby on Rails: Talk" group. To post to this group, send email to rubyonrails-talk-/JYPxA39Uh5TLH3MbocFF+G/Ez6ZCGd0@public.gmane.org To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rubyonrails-talk+unsubscribe-/JYPxA39Uh5TLH3MbocFF+G/Ez6ZCGd0@public.gmane.org For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk?hl=en.