[Seaside] Long submit problems with IE

[Marco Qualizza]

Hello,

   I'll try to make the difference between the two as clear as mud.

First, GET.  GET is really easy.  What it means is that all of the
submitted information is in the URL.  http://mysite/mypage?x=1&y=2 is
a simple GET submission that sends x = 1 and y = 2 to the server.
There is a limit on how long URLs can be.

POST is a little more complex, and I think that I'll need to delve a
bit into the depths of HTTP to explain it.  When you make an HTTP
request -- say that GET request above -- what happens is that your
browser connects to the server, sends it some information (the page
you're looking for, some browser info, where you came from, etc), and
then reads the response from the server (this response is the contents
of the HTML page that the browser is going to show).  A POST request
does the same as a GET, but allows the browser to add more information
(think of it as a section marked "this is where the data that you want
to submit").  It's a different section then what the GET uses -- the
GET includes the data in the section that indicates the page you are
looking for.  POST requests are allowed to be essentially unlimited.
(Unlimited for practical purposes... but then again, try uploading a
really huge file... uploading a file with a browser is a POST rquest).

HTH,
   - m

Saturday, November 10, 2007, 1:15:34 PM, you wrote:

> I've looked a little bit more into this.  I don't know how reliable this
> information is but I've seen it in a few places.  The general concensus is
> that IE limits GET form submissions to about 2000 characters.  No limits are
> placed on POST submits.  I don't know a whole heck of a lot about the 
> difference between the two (which is why I use Seaside ;-).  Perhaps other
> browsers have similar mechanisms in place for GETs, but they are simply
> larger and it would just be a matter of time before the ceiling is reached
> on Firefox or Safari.

> -Carl


>> This is a problem that has been posted about a few times, but until 
>> yesterday I wasn't able to put my finger on the cause.  I'm not absolutely 
>> sure why this is, but it seems that IE has some pretty draconian hard 
>> coded limits in place about how long a form submit can be.  When writing 
>> programs in Run BASIC on IE once a program gets to be a few thousand bytes 
>> long the submit fails when trying to do anything on the page (running, 
>> saving, etc.). The result is the dreaded "Internet Explorer cannot display 
>> the webpage" error message.  Has anyone else here had to deal with this? 
>> Is there a way to work around the problem?
>>
>> I'm using VW7.4.1 and Seaside 2.6 and Web Toolkit.  Do newer versions of 
>> Seaside handle this differently?
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> -Carl Gundel
>> http://www.runbasic.com