Where does VBFORUMS save the "text" of a post when it does that AUTOSAVE??

[szlamany]

So - you know how when you are posting a thread like this - every now and then you see an AUTO-SAVED charm appear in the lower-right corner.

Where does it save this text?

I would like to implement something similar in my own web app - so that if an AJAX request to save a big note to the server fails the user can simply recover the last text.

[si_the_geek]

I'm pretty sure it's in a cookie

javascript can use cookies, but I can't help with the code

[szlamany]

Thanks for the info.

I've never done cookies. Anyone have some pointers?

[dclamp]

I just checked my cookies for VBF and didnt see any cookies for auto save. I assumed it was saved in the database using AJAX.

Also doing some research, it seems that Administrators are able to delete everything that is auto-saved from their end, which would point toward database opposed to cookies.

[sapator]

I can give you the cookie settings:

function getCookie(c_name) {
    var i, x, y, ARRcookies = document.cookie.split(";");
    for (i = 0; i < ARRcookies.length; i++) {
        x = ARRcookies[i].substr(0, ARRcookies[i].indexOf("="));
        y = ARRcookies[i].substr(ARRcookies[i].indexOf("=") + 1);
        x = x.replace(/^\s+|\s+$/g, "");
        if (x == c_name) {
            return unescape(y);
        }
    }
}


function setCookie(c_name, value, exdays) {
    var exdate = new Date();
    //exdays = 99;
    exdate.setDate(exdate.getDate() + exdays);
    var c_value = escape(value) + ((exdays == null) ? "" : "; expires=" + exdate.toUTCString());
    document.cookie = c_name + "=" + c_value;
}


function deleteCookie(name) {
    document.cookie = name + '=; expires=Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:01 GMT;';
}

You can also set them from server side but i guess this is something you wouldn't like
P.S. Notice the .toUTCString() . This is vital if you want to work with Iexplorer !

[tr333]

I would guess it might use LocalStorage. The alternative would be cookies, accessed through document.cookie, but cookies have very low storage space in comparison.

For data that doesn't need to get sent back to the server, LocalStorage is the way to go. The data should (barring any browser bugs) be restricted-access from the DOM via Same-origin policy, so you can't access LocalStorage data for another domain. Each origin will usually get 5 megabytes of storage space.

Cookies are transmitted on every request going to-from the server, and that includes all assets (js, css, images, etc.) individually. This is why most large websites retrieve their assets from a separate domain that doesn't set any cookies. Individual cookies are limited to 4 kilobytes data.

EDIT: dclamp might also be correct with the AJAX auto-saving.

[sapator]

Well an IE7 simulator could resolve if localstorage is used.

[szlamany]

Well - I guess I could have seen this myself. I went into FireBug and sure enough after I waited a short bit it did an AJAX POST to save the data.

My need it to specifically save something locally in case the database/web server is not available for the POST.

I don't want to save it in a COOKIE it that gets transmitted around - that's no good.

Is LOCALSTORAGE going to be a problem since it's newer (HTML5?) - will all my clients have access to this?