# \[Slightly OT\] Dealing with lost connections **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [July 24, 2006, 4:39am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/slightly-ot-dealing-with-lost-connections/99566 "2006-07-24T04:39:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![mohits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/bbe5ce/32.png) [@mohits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mohits)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 4:39am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/slightly-ot-dealing-with-lost-connections/99566/1 "2006-07-24T04:39:04Z")
Hi! I know that the web is essentially stateless, so I was wondering about how lost connections can be managed. I have an application that posts data to a web form. This form has a large number of items (about 38) and I’m a bit concerned about the connection being lost while posting the data. Is it safe to assume that the web application will reject the transmission if the right number of data bytes is not received from the client? (The POST header stores the length of the content) Is there anything else that I can do to make it robust? Thanks Mohit. ---
**Author:** ![mohits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/bbe5ce/32.png) [@mohits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mohits)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 12:38pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/slightly-ot-dealing-with-lost-connections/99566/2 "2006-07-24T12:38:22Z")
Simply do validation on the inputs. If all 38 of them are supposed to be there, then use validates\_presence\_of, and return the page to the user to fix if something’s missing. But to your underlying question, the user hitting submit twice after not getting a quick response is a much, much bigger issue than POSTs getting cut off during transmission. ``` - dan ``` – Dan K. [mailto:removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) [http://www.dankohn.com/](http://www.dankohn.com/)tel:+1-415-233-1000 ---
**Author:** ![mohits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/bbe5ce/32.png) [@mohits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mohits)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 6:19pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/slightly-ot-dealing-with-lost-connections/99566/3 "2006-07-24T18:19:59Z")
I still see lots of sites say “Please only click once”. You really don’t want to move the essential questions to the bottom. That’s bad UI design. If you’re so worried about partial forms, create a 39th hidden field at the bottom, and the validate for the presence of that one. ``` - dan ``` – Dan K. [mailto:removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) [http://www.dankohn.com/](http://www.dankohn.com/)tel:+1-415-233-1000 ---
**Author:** ![mohits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/bbe5ce/32.png) [@mohits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mohits)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 3:42pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/slightly-ot-dealing-with-lost-connections/99566/4 "2006-07-24T15:42:40Z")
Dan K. wrote: > Simply do validation on the inputs. If all 38 of them are supposed to > be there, then use validates\_presence\_of, and return the page to the > user to fix if something’s missing. But to your underlying question, > the user hitting submit twice after not getting a quick response is a > much, much bigger issue than POSTs getting cut off during transmission. > > ``` > - dan > > ``` > > –Dan K. [mailto:removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) > [http://www.dankohn.com/](http://www.dankohn.com/)tel:+1-415-233-1000 Hi Dan, Thanks for the pointers… a number of those parameters are not essential, but I can move the essential parameter to the end of the list and use validates\_presence\_of on that parameter to try to ensure that it seems to be working! As for submitting twice, in this specific application, I don’t have to worry too much about that since the submission is being done automatically by my own program and I can control that to some extent 🙂 What is the general practice to avoid having double submissions? I notice that some of my preferred sites use Javascript to disable the button once submit has been clicked… if JS is disabled, then that doesn’t work (but I guess they assume that most people who disable JS themselves know better than to submit it twice!) Cheers Mohit. ---
**Author:** ![mohits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/bbe5ce/32.png) [@mohits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mohits)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 6:36pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/slightly-ot-dealing-with-lost-connections/99566/5 "2006-07-24T18:36:27Z")
Dan K. wrote: > I still see lots of sites say “Please only click once”. You really > don’t want to move the essential questions to the bottom. That’s bad > UI design. If you’re so worried about partial forms, create a 39th > hidden field at the bottom, and the validate for the presence of that > one. > > ``` > - dan > > ``` > > –Dan K. [mailto:removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) > [http://www.dankohn.com/](http://www.dankohn.com/)tel:+1-415-233-1000 > Hi Dan, As always, thanks for the good advice… It’s a good point that we should not move the essential items to the bottom… but, like I said, in my case, the form is submitted automatically by a piece of software. So, I have the flexibility to format the POST string to place the item right at the end irrespective of the position of the question in the UI. (In fact, in my case, the user will not often see the data before it is submitted) 🙂 But, I appreciate your concern and I do agree the hidden field makes a nice simple option! Cheers Mohit.