AjaxFormValidatingBehavior Performance and Lost focus on Firefox - ajax

My project is using Wicket's AjaxFormValidatingBehavior to auto-save form content to Session on sort of a multi-tab form with a tree menu (there is no save button on individual tabs, though there is a "Save" button that actually submits the form, runs the validations and saves contents to database). I am facing few issues:
Since the behavior is added to all form components' onChange event, there is a server-trip every time user moves from one field to another. I know that a throttle duration can be specified to prevent this, but its not possible to set in my case as my forms are of different lengths/complexity, many components dynamically generated (including the tree menu). But is there a more elegant solution to auto-save form content (that doesn't have a submit button) rather than this annoying solution.
Another issue I am facing is that post onChange event, on Firefox the component loses its focus after the "server trip" ends. While on IE7 it works fine.

For the first question I think you need to add a pipelining facility, on your components' onchange call a javascript function of your which calls your webapp. You can include a feature similar to the one provided with the throttle duration but page-wide (delay each calls and only trigger the last if it is older than x milliseconds for example).
For the second one, I think you have to use the AjaxRequestTarget#focusComponent in your behaviors, or handle this thing in your "wrapper" as described in the first answer.

Related

Text in CKEDITOR field not being submitted in the first submission

The text in ckeditor field is not sent when submitting forms for the first time (only on the second time, third time, etc).
For example, If try to create an article's post and submit the form I'll get a validation error: 'The field body is required'. If try to submit again (for the second time or third time), It will work well.
The real problem is when editing! For example, when editing a form the field 'body', among others fields, is filled out with the data from the database. In other words, there are already text in the ckeditor field.
If I try to submit the form for the first time it will not update the body because the text in the ckeditor is not sent; what is sent is the default value (the old article's body, which was filled out with data from the DB).
Therefore, it won't edit unless I get a validation error in other field (if I get a validation error, I'll have to submit again, and that will work).
How to solve this problem? Is this an known bug in CKEDITOR 4? If I don't solve it the users will feel frustrated if they have to submit the form at least twice to edit or to create an article.
Here is a list of plugins I'm using (may be useful to solve the problem):
a11yhelp, about, api, autocomplete, autocorrect, browser, clipboard, colordialog, copyformatting, crossereference, dialog, div, docprops, find, googlesearch, image, link, liststyle, magicline, mathjax, openlink, pastecode, pastefromword, preview, quicktable, scayt, section, showblocks, sourcedialog, specialchar, table, tableselection, tabletools, tabletoolstoolbar, texttransform, widget, wsc
By the way, I downloaded ckeditor using ckeditor builder in their official website.
I opened this issue in GitHub and a guy figured out the problem. His proposed solution worked wel!! Here is what he said:
Workaround
As the issue is more tricky to fix than it seems, for now I propose a
simple workaround: invoke ajaxRequest not on $( document ).ready,
but rather on editor's loaded event:
CKEDITOR.replace( 'editor', {
on: {
loaded: function() {ajaxRequest();}
}
});
Explanation of the issue
The issue is connected with how DOM listeners are registered for given
element:
The order of event listeners for a particular event type will always
be:
The event listeners registered with addEventListener() before the first time the event handler's value was set to non-null
Then the callback to which it is currently set, if any
Finally, the event listeners registered with addEventListener() after the first time the event handler's value was set to non-null.
In case of CKEditor 4, the value of the form's element is modified by
editor._attachToForm private method, which adds event listener to
form's submit event:
ckeditor-dev/core/editor.js form.on( 'submit', onSubmit );
However this listener is added on loaded event, which is fired
asynchronously when editor is loaded – so after registering
synchronous onsubmit handler with the validation logic. This way
editor's field is updated after validating.
Proposed solutions
Update editor's element on formdata event. This way we would have
total control over data being submitted and we would be sure that
correct data is set before submit event. The problem with this
solution is the fact that browsers' support is non-existent; the event
will appear in Chrome 77, however it is still not known if and when
the support will appear in Firefox or Safari.
Update editor's element on every change in the editor's content thanks
to change event. This solution will also fix cases, where some other
scripts are using value not from the editor, but directly from the
replaced textarea – they would get fresh data more often then only
after submitting the form. However this solution requires #1364, which
connects with a pretty big refactoring.
NOTE: AjaxRequest is the function I was using to submit the form togehter with Jquery.

Angular Material md-select load options in async way

I need to load select's options asynchronously (
through a service), using the Angular Material md-select component.
Actually, I use a click event to load data. It works but I need to click the select twice to show the options. That it's a problem.
The expected behavior is shown at this link (AngularJs Material)
The actual behavior is shown at this link.
Is Async options' loading supported by md-select?
The reason you need to click twice is because when you first click, there are no options in the select control and so it doesn't try and open the panel. Then your async method loads the options into the DOM and on the next click it will open.
In order to deal with this, you must always include at least one <mat-option> in your <mat-select>. You can add a disabled <mat-option> with a <mat-spinner> showing that the data is loading for example.
Here the most simple example of that. This is not the best approach... see below.
However, this still uses the click event which isn't the best approach. If you put the click event on the <mat-select> there are spots where you can click on the control but your click event wont trigger even though the dropdown panel still opens (places like the floating label area). You could put the click event on the <mat-form-field> but then there will be places where you can click and trigger the click event but the dropdown panel wont open (places like the hint/error text area). In both cases you lose keyboard support.
I would suggest using the <mat-select> openChanged event instead of a click event. This has its own quirks too but they are manageable.
Here is an example using the openChanged event. I also made the component more robust overall.
I also made a version that uses the placeholder element to show the spinner instead of using a disabled mat-option. This required View Encapsulation to be turned off.
Note: In my example, the service can return different data depending on the circumstances. To simulate this my fake service keeps track of how many requests you send it and changes the options returned accordingly. So I have to set the option list back to empty and clear the formControl's value every time the list is opened. I save the selected value before clearing the formControl so that if the service returns a list with the same item I can automatically reselect the value. If you only need to load the options once, then you would want to modify the code a bit to only load the options the first time the user opens the select.

Universal Analytics: How to track conversions when URL doesn't change?

I'm in the process of upgrading a couple of sites to Universal Analytics and need some help setting up goals for conversion tracking...
I am now using auto event tracking (click listener) to see where users are clicking on the sites' forms, but I'm not sure how I can create goals for form submissions as the URL does not change. (Previously I was sending virtual pageviews when the submit button was clicked, but I don't think it's possible to do this in Universal Analytics?)
I know by using the click listener I can still see how many times the submit button of the form is clicked, but I need to set this up as a goal so I can monitor the cost per conversion of my AdWords campaigns.
Any help appreciated!
loop, if you are using GTM, you can simply use Form Submit Listener:
This listener then could fire an event tracking, which will serve as the condition for any conversion goals you might need. Just keep in mind when setting the conditions for goals, ALL of the Event-related dimensions (category, action, label) need to match, even though you can use only one (for example category = form submitted) as well.

AJAX and prediction of actions

I'd like to ask your opinion on this. This is a theoretical question.
I'm in a situation where I have an interface shown to a user that uses AJAX to talk to the server. The server-side language does not matter here. I have a form with fields and each of them are deletable. If the user selects a few "delete" -checkboxes and presses Update, then I have these two options to do:
Option 1:
When deleting fields, use JavaScript to remove the HTML immediately and run AJAX on background to delete those fields. This achieves a look of a fast interface -> better user experience. However, if the AJAX call fails on the server side (the fields couldn't be deleted), then the previously deleted HTML fields would give a false assumption for the user (of them being deleted).
Option 2:
When deleting fields, run AJAX, depending on its success, either remove the HTML or do not. This gives accurate feedback for the user, but the form would freeze until the AJAX call finishes = slow(er).
What are your thoughts? Which approach seems better for me to take or should I make it an option?
Option 3: Mark the controls as being deleted (e.g. overlay a translucent gray box with a delete icon on it). Send the request. When it returns, either remove the controls, or change the box to show an error icon for a few seconds (then remove the box).
Allow the rest of the interface to be interacted with while this goes on.
Nice question.
A third option would be to :
disable immediately the controls
delete them when the Ajax returns
This gives the user feedback that something was effectively requested (responsiveness),
while showing also the moment where it is effectively completed.
Also, the user somehow feels the "distant call", which does not induce him in error, because it is was really happens. Anyway, there is nothing meaningful we can do to hide this feeling, because the delay will always be there.

How can I maintain the checkbox state on a page that is refreshed by Ajax?

I have a html table in my application that shows the state of various jobs running in the system. Each job has a state associated with it e.g a swirly gif for running jobs. New jobs have a checkbox next to them that allows the user to select and kick off the associated job.
The table is a struts2 auto refreshing div (sx:div), it refreshes every few seconds to reflect what is currently happening with the jobs.
The problem is that when the div refreshes I lose that state of the checkboxes.
Is there an elegant way of maintaining their state? I have the option of calling some javascript upon completion of the ajax refresh using the dojo topic system built into the tag but i'm not sure what is the best way to approach it.
I'm not very familiar with struts so take me advice for what it's worth.
There are two ways to approach this that I see.
The first (and probably simplest) is to add an event to the checkboxes which stores the checked state in an array or object onchange. Then, on callback from the ajax refresh, restore those states.
The second approach would require that the ajax refresh either be executed as a post so that the checkboxes are submitted to the server, or having a separate ajax action which fires off when a checkbox is checked. With either of these options, the ajax refresh could "know" at render which checkboxes to render as checked.
If you decide to go with number one, the javascript is not very difficult, especially if you happen to be using a good library (jquery, etc.).

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