Question

`I am working with an API that sends back an XML response upon request. Here’s a simplified example:

  <buildings>
   <building attr1="foo" attr2="bar">
     <uri>http://blah.com</uri>
     <thumbnail>http://blah.com/foo-picture.jpg</thumbnail>
   </building>
   <building attr1="poo" attr2="pee">
    ...
   </building>
 </buildings>

After I use $.get() to request the XML, I have to search through it to get the <building>s that have attr1="foo" for example.

After displaying this result set, each <building> has a link that sends the user to another page, let’s say details.htm?id=fun There is only one ‘page,’ but the content changes depending on the id that is passed along in the URL.

Finally, the question:

I have to include Next and Previous links to navigate within the result set that I ended up with after searching through the original XML response.

If the result set was always guaranteed to be very small, I could pass it in the url, similar to
details.htm?id=fun&nextid=morefun&previd=lessfun

However, I have to account for the possibility of a very large result set.

Can anyone suggest a method for making the result set persistent while a user is navigating within it? The way I have it set up at the moment is that an array of result IDs is generated after the search is complete and the result set has been returned. Is there a way to make this array portable and (relatively) permanent?

Answer 1

Probably the easiest is to use PHP Sessions unless you want to make a pure ajax site.