ANY JAVASCRIPT gurus out therE?! is it possible to..

energie

I have a feeling that the way i want to do it is impossible, but maybe someone else can give me a hint or suggestions on how to do it

I have a page with a form.
this form has 3 selection boxes

select box 1, select box 2 , select box 3

select box2's content depends on 1, and select box 3 depends on 2

I want to do this:

box1's content is static.
once the user selects something, onchange will call a javascript function and query the server for the content to populate box 2 with, and so on with box 3

so in short, i want to have the clientside tell my server to do a query, and return the result to the clientside, then i'l use javascript to populate the content of selection box2.

is this possible?

any suggestions will be greatly appreciated!!
thanks

MrAlaska

No, not with javascript anyway. The only way you could do that with javascript is by including all the contents of your database within the javascipt itself. I don't even think you could do it with a Java applet.

EDIT: As soon as I said I didn't think you could do it with an applet, I wondered why you wouldn't be able to do it with an applet, and it does look like that might be a possibility:
http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/TSG/manuals/databases/oracle/standard/java.815/a64685/advanc2.htm#1000997

EDIT AGAIN: But perhaps not a very viable possibilty, you still gots ta play in the sandbox.

tomhath

You have two choices. Send all possible selections for box 2 and 3 when the page is served the first time and let javascript change them as needed (obviously this is only practical if the amount of data is reasonable). Or have javascript submit the a form and serve up a new page with php or whatever.

The first choice is better if you can get away with it, because the updates to the other selection boxes will be almost instantaneous. How many combinations of box 2 and box three are there?

Cogitator

You can do it if you useRemote Scripting from Microsoft. It's easier to just refresh the page, however.

MrAlaska

Originally posted by Cogitator
You can do it if you useRemote Scripting from Microsoft. It's easier to just refresh the page, however.

Good ol' Microsoft, they don't worry about no stinking sandbox.

What would we do without ActiveX? I might even enable it some day.... nahhhh....

leroux

I have solved a similar problem by having a hidden frame. in the select box's onchange, load a script in the hidden frame that will populate the second/third select box with the relevant options.

Just remember that in IE 5.0 there is a bug that if you try to add options to a select box that lives in a different frame/window, then you get funny errors. I got around this by creating a simple function in the main window that adds an option to the select box. You then simply call this function in stead of going 'new Option(text, value)' in the hidden frame.

Hope this helps.
🙂

neh

Originally posted by energie
I have a feeling that the way i want to do it is impossible, but maybe someone else can give me a hint or suggestions on how to do it

I have a page with a form.
this form has 3 selection boxes

select box 1, select box 2 , select box 3

select box2's content depends on 1, and select box 3 depends on 2

I want to do this:

box1's content is static.
once the user selects something, onchange will call a javascript function and query the server for the content to populate box 2 with, and so on with box 3

so in short, i want to have the clientside tell my server to do a query, and return the result to the clientside, then i'l use javascript to populate the content of selection box2.

is this possible?

any suggestions will be greatly appreciated!!
thanks

you can do this kind of thing with a hidden frame ..

you main frame calls code in the hidden frame (which basically redirects it to a url with the query info) .. when the hidden frame reloads it is basically just the data (as a string or whatever) and then code to update the innterhtml property of the select object in the main frame you want to reflect this data .. you can also have some sort of graphic (hourglass gif or something) become visible while this server trip is going on so the user knows the app is still working ..

its a bit fiddly but other than a java applet its the only way to do this kind of server round trip without having to load the whole page again ..

neh

Originally posted by leroux
I have solved a similar problem by having a hidden frame. in the select box's onchange, load a script in the hidden frame that will populate the second/third select box with the relevant options.

Just remember that in IE 5.0 there is a bug that if you try to add options to a select box that lives in a different frame/window, then you get funny errors. I got around this by creating a simple function in the main window that adds an option to the select box. You then simply call this function in stead of going 'new Option(text, value)' in the hidden frame.

Hope this helps.
🙂

lol .. snap 🙂