Maximum Form Data

Some people can't submit my form - others can - no obvious solution

[MatthewHSE]

I have a fairly long survey form using the free aformmail script. It's only been up a few days, but so far about four people have not been able to submit the form. After several e-mails back and forth, I've learned that they click the "Submit" button, and nothing happens. No confirmation page, no confirmation e-mail, nothing. The page just sits there. Checking from our end, I can verify that the form never was submitted to us.

For some people, clicking "Submit" a second time has helped. For others, it hasn't.

So far, there's no obvious common denominator here. At least one of the people is using IE 6 on Windows ME. I've been wondering if there's simply a limit to how much form data some some browsers can send from a form. Does anyone know of a limitation like that? My form is pretty long and people are submitting a lot of data. Maybe their browsers just can't handle it.

Has anyone else experienced problems like this, and if so, what's the solution?

Thanks,

Matthew

[tedster]

As long as the form uses the POST method, and not GET, there is no practical limit to the size of the data sent.

There is sometimes a size limit at the server level when the data gets added to the database, depending on what kinds of "data cleaning" routines may be in place. Memo fields, though large, still have limits. But the submit button still works in these cases, so I doubt that's the issue for your situation.

A couple more directions:

1. Are you using any client side checks on the form data, in javascript for example? If so, have a check into those routines. They could account for the "sometimes works, sometimes not" nature of the bug reports you're getting.

2. Have you asked these people about firewalls, privacy/security applications, etc? Those could be blocking data sent through your form - although I would expect the user to see some kind of alert if that's what is going on.

3. For the IE users who have trouble, how have they configured the Security Zones in IE - still at default or not?

[MatthewHSE]

Hi Tedster, thanks for your reply.

I think I found the problem. I went to check to make sure I'd used POST instead of GET, and found that I'd carelessly left the method out of the <form> tag altogether. That seems like the kind of error that would result in this kind of erratic behavior. I added the method attribute, and will now see if that fixes the problems.

I'm not using any JavaScript on the form page, so that's not the issue. I suppose it could be one of the other points you mentioned, though frankly I dread the thought of having to talk people through finding out about zone settings and firewalls. Hopefully adding the method attribute will fix the problem.

If anyone can confirm that a missing method attribute could have caused these issues, I'd appreciate it. I really don't want to walk through the security settings of other people's computers through e-mail or phone unless I'm sure they know what they're doing.

[Krapulator]

Yes this would probably be the problem. The default method is GET if no method is specified.