- From: Alastair Aitken CLMS <ZPALASTAIR@CLUSTER.NORTH-LONDON.AC.UK>
- Date: Wed, 29 Jun 94 13:48 BST
- To: WWW-TALK <WWW-TALK@www0.cern.ch>, WWW-HTML <WWW-HTML@www0.cern.ch>
Copies to www-talk and www-html. Sorry to be a bore but this is important and a lot simpler than some people seem to think. Adding a lookup attribute to fields requires, in my earlier example, simply a word "lookup" and a numeric value n. The "lookup" tells the browser that there is a reference file against which to verify any input. The numeric value tells the browser to search the file attached to the field when n characters have been entered in the input field. If a hit is scored then the resulting record is pulled out of the file and put into the input field. I think that's about ten or twelve lines of code depending upon the structure of the form the browser recieves, e.g: how the reference file or files are attached to the form. If they are refenced in the <input ...> then they can be delivered to the browser as part of the package. All the browser has to do is open the relevant file when focus hits the field and do a dynamic read when 4 or 5 characters have been entered, if there isn't a hit then the field could be blanked and the user told why - no hit. Seems pretty simple for the browser, simple for the server but gives people like me a powerful tool with which to buuild "clever" forms. Do I need to write a bit of pseudocode or code for this for anyone? Al. <-:< (zpalastair@grid.unl.ac.uk)
Received on Wednesday, 29 June 1994 14:49:25 UTC