Re: Client storing query state (was Re: [help-GIFT] Adding and removing images to/from gift)

[David Squire]

Kamil Wencel wrote:
> Jonas Lindqvist schrieb:
>>> 1. I have to create a new MRML client system from scratch which takes
>>> all user preferences into account and
>>> keeps track of all selected images ( wanted / unwanted ) before forming
>>> the "real" query for the gift.
>> Doesn't the "original" (not the monosock) php-demo-client store such
>> info as hidden-variables in the html forms?
> yes, that's true but it doesn't help much. It is only of value as long
> as the user is seeing
> the thumbnails which are displayed by the mrml output client script.
> Try to imagine the users click path:
>
> - search images ( query )
> - get search results ( page with gift results as thumbnails )
> -- now the users wants to see the article and clicks on the thumbnails
> which
>    will redirect him to the article page
> -- now the users want's to go back to the search results because this
> article
>    was not what he was looking for.
>
> the last step will always fail if you deploy the system with hidden
> input fields, because
> the former page used to be a posted one so the browser will not go
> back. The only way to
> solve this problem is to store what the user selected before - either
> in gift itself ( which
> is deprecated ) or somewhere inbetween.

So you can do what my client does. It establishes a unique interface
session ID and stores the required state on the machine where the
interface is running, passing the interface session ID as a hidden
field. I do this in a quick and dirty file in /tmp, but you could make
it as nice as you like on the (interface) server, using proper
server-side sessions, etc.

Regards,

David


-- 
Dr. David McG. Squire, Senior Lecturer. On sabbatical in 2006.
Caulfield School of Information Technology, Monash University, Australia
CRICOS Provider No. 00008C       http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~davids/