Question

Is it better-practice to AJAX every form element separately (eg. send request onChange, etc) or collect all the data, then submit with 1 click save?

Essentially, auto-save or user-initiated-save?

Answer 1

Depends on following factors:

1. What kind of data are you trying to save. E.g. is it okay to be able to save the data partly or you need to save it all at once?
2. How much data do you want to save? If you have many fields, you might want to send data in chunks (In case of wizards) or save everything at once
3. Its also a good idea to have data saved (in background) for large forms in a temp way if the user may take a long time to fill in the data (e.g. emails saved as drafts)
4. It also depends on your web app and the way you have designed your forms. In some forms you may allow certain fields to be modified and saved inplace, so that you can fetch additional data for example
5. In most cases it would be good to have an explicit “Save” action for your data forms