Question

I have a form with a variable number of text boxes that contain an id. When the user exits the page, files on the server are deleted by a python script (delete.py). The filename of the files to delete contains the id so the id has to be passed to the python script. If my form has a single id, everything works perfectly and the file on the server is deleted. If my form has multiple id fields, no files get deleted. If I use firebug to step through the code, the files gets deleted regardless of the number of id fields. I don’t understand what is going on. Any help would be greatly appreciated. My onbeforeunload method is below.

function deleteFiles()
  {
  var xmlhttp;

  if (window.XMLHttpRequest)
  {
    xmlhttp=new XMLHttpRequest();
  }
  else
  {
    xmlhttp=new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
  }  

  allElements = document.getElementsByName("id");
  for (x=0; x < allElements.length; x++)
  {
    xmlhttp.open("GET","/cgi-bin/delete.py?id=" + allElements[x].value,true);
    xmlhttp.send();
   }  

window.onbeforeunload = deleteFiles;

Answer 1

Sounds like the request’s are being sent too fast. Try adding

xmlhttp.async = false;

function deleteFiles()
  {
  var xmlhttp;

  if (window.XMLHttpRequest)
  {
    xmlhttp=new XMLHttpRequest();

  }
  else
  {
    xmlhttp=new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
  }  

  allElements = document.getElementsByName("id");

  xmlhttp.async = false;

  for (x=0; x < allElements.length; x++)
  {
    xmlhttp.open("GET","/cgi-bin/delete.py?id=" + allElements[x].value,true);

    xmlhttp.send();
   }  

window.onbeforeunload = deleteFiles;

Let me know your findings