For a rails 3 app I am building, a user gets to share a post which has numerous different parameters. Some parameters are optional, others are required. While the user is filling out the parameters, I want to generate a preview for how the post will look on the fly. Some parameters are URLs which need to be sent back to the server to process, so basically, the preview cannot be 100% generated client side.
I was wondering what it the best way to go about this. Since it could be a lot of data, I don’t want to send all the data back to the server every time something changes to regenerate the preview. I would rather only like to send the data that has changed. But in this case, where is the rest of the data stored? In a session, perhaps? Also, I would prefer to not rebuild the model object with all the data every time. Is there a way to persist the model object that represents the post as it is being created?
Thanks.
How big is that “a lot of data”? If you send it all, does it have a noticeable impact on performance, or are you just imagining that it would?
As you provided not too much information, here’s basic info on what I would do:
process client-side. As much as possible.
data that can’t be processed on the client – send to the server (only that part, not the rest of it). Receive result of processing and incorporate into what you already built.
no sessions, partially built models and any other state on the server. Stateless protocols are simple. Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability.