Forms from MySQL not fully loading

Server speed?

[tryan]

Hi folks

I have a web app that loads large forms based on queries to MySQL. The amount of data that is loaded can be quite large. Sometimes the form (and therefore the page in the browser) loads with incomplete data - the page might end prematurely - it might be truncated before the end.

It would appear that the connection was slow and the query wasn't finished or that the page was loaded before all of the data was processed and loaded. And it doesn't happen consistently.

Is this common? Is it a server issue? Can I code around it? Does my host need to tweak something in MySQL or PHP or Apache?

Let me know if you need more info.

Thanks in advance

Tom

[Salsa]

I've run into this problem before. I think it's a browser issue, but I'm not certain. In one example from my experience, the first form page asks a visitor to enter the first and last days of an event. The next form page displays a line for each date, followed by dropdowns to select opening and closing hours for each day of the event. Typically, these were weekend events and rarely more than 10 days. In those typical cases, there was no problem with browsers loading the forms. If an event were a year long, however, most clients/browsers would choke on the seemingly endless lines of hours options. (Besides, it wouldn't have been practical to expect a visitor to make so many selections, anyway, so for events of more than so many days, I provided an alternative for selecting "regular weekly hours.") In my case, the server was processing and sending all of the info, but most clients simply wouldn't/couldn't display it fully.

Whether it's a browser issue or client memory issue, or something else, I'd figure it's not as large an issue as whether a visitor is acutally going to fill out such a user-unfriendly large form. I suggest that you break your forms down into smaller chunks of multiple pages.

[tryan]

Thanks Salsa

That's a legitimate suggestion, except it not only happens on a form that needs to be filled out. It also occasionally happens on a page that simply displays info about a 'subject'. It can be quite lengthy and depending on the info some of it will need to loop from two to five times. It involves a number of queries and at least one smallish image.

But if I can't come up with any other theories, I may have to split it up into sections to see if it resolves it.

We'll see.

Thanks

Tom