# Weird ajax problem

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/weird-ajax-problem/160737>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [February 19, 2009, 8:10am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/weird-ajax-problem/160737 "2009-02-19T08:10:42Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![jeffpritchard](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/43a26b/32.png) [@jeffpritchard](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jeffpritchard)\
**Post date:** [February 19, 2009, 8:10am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/weird-ajax-problem/160737/1 "2009-02-19T08:10:42Z")

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I put together a search based on a text field and a form observer. The  
observer triggers an ajax method that does a paginated search of a large  
number of items and does a render :update to update the list of items  
with the new contents based on the search. Pretty standard stuff.

The weirdness is that the very first character typed in the search term  
field typically results in a large number of items to return. The  
second character greatly reduces the size of the results, as do the  
subsequent characters typed in.

What happens visually is that if you type a few characters quickly, you  
get the expected short list of results…followed a second or two later  
by the larger result set appropriate to the first character typed. The  
logging confirms that the rails app is doing the right thing in the  
right order.

It appears that it is simply the size of that first set of results that  
is causing it to take longer to get to the browser, so it winds up being  
displayed out of order.

Anybody run into something like this before? Did you come up with some  
clever solution?

thanks,  
Jeff

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jeffpritchard](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/43a26b/32.png) [@jeffpritchard](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jeffpritchard)\
**Post date:** [February 20, 2009, 4:07am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/weird-ajax-problem/160737/2 "2009-02-20T04:07:45Z")

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Jeff P. wrote:

> I put together a search based on a text field and a form observer. …\>  
> What happens visually is that if you type a few characters quickly, you  
> get the expected short list of results…followed a second or two later  
> by the larger result set appropriate to the first character typed. The  
> logging confirms that the rails app is doing the right thing in the  
> right order.

…\>

> thanks,  
> Jeff

Just a quick note in case somebody stumbles upon this doing a search  
some day. The solution was actually to slow down the observer. I  
changed the observer time to 1.5 seconds (used to have it at 0.1  
seconds, when I didn’t understand the underlying mechanism that was  
making it fail). Now when you type at either slow or fast speeds  
everything gets to the browser in the proper order and all is well. It  
basically just winds up not even seeing the first letter you type by  
itself, but rather sees it together with the second letter when you are  
typing at normal speeds. Typing really slowly, there is time for the  
first response to get back to the browser before the second character is  
typed into the search field.

Works well now.

jp