Question

How do I use Ajax to add data to a DB and return an answer without refreshing?

Asked by: ImWorkingOnItNow

Hello Experts. I'm a new member.  Please let me thank you in advance for your help.

I am wondering if I can use Coldfusion/Spry to accomplish the following without refreshing the page:
1. Take information from a form
2. Insert that data into a DB
3. Return a "thank you" message that includes information from the form.

I have included the basic code with this post.  Any and all help is greatly appreciated.

+------Page 1------+
<!--Newsletter Signup-->            
        <div id="news">
	<p Broker Newsletter</p>
            <cfform action="newsReturn.cfm" method="post">
            	<table>
                	<tr>
                    	<td>
                       	Name
			</td>
                        <td>
                        	<cfinput name="brokerName" type="text" required="yes" message="Your Name is Required" validateat="onserver">
                        </td>
                    </tr>
                	<tr>
                    	<td>
                        	Email
						</td>
                        <td>
                        	<cfinput name="brokerEmail" type="text" required="yes" message="Your Email is Required" validateat="onserver">
                        </td>
                    </tr>
                    <tr>
                    	<td colspan="2" align="center">
                        	<input type="submit" />
                        </td>
                    </tr>
                </table>
            </cfform>
            </div>
<!--End Newsletter Signup-->  
 
 
+------Page 2 - newsReturn------+
<cfinsert datasource="datasource" tablename="tablename">
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title>newsReturn</title>
</head>
 
<body>
<div id="newsThanks">
<cfoutput>
<p>Thank you #form.brokerName#. We will be sending our newsletter to #form.brokerEmail#.</p>
</cfoutput>
</div>
</body>
</html>
                                  
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Asked On
2008-11-25 at 14:35:55ID23935773
Tags

Adobe

,

Coldversion

,

8

,

Spry submission without page refresh

,

Spry

,

all

Topics

Cold Fusion Markup Language

,

Web Languages/Standards

,

Dynamic HTML (DHTML)

Participating Experts
1
Points
500
Comments
15

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Answers

 

by: bjv211Posted on 2008-12-02 at 14:43:28ID: 23081646

You can do this with ColdFusion.Ajax.submitForm function in CF 8:

---returnNews.cfm---
<cfinsert datasource="datasource" tablename="tablename">
<div id="newsThanks">
<cfoutput>
<p>Thank you #form.brokerName#. We will be sending our newsletter to #form.brokerEmail#.</p>
</cfoutput>
</div>
 
---newsSignup.cfm---
<head>
<cfajaximport>
<script>
    function submitForm() {
        ColdFusion.Ajax.submitForm('newssignupform', 'returnNews.cfm', callback,
            errorHandler);
    }
    
    function callback(text)
    {
		container.innerHTML = text;
    }
    
    function errorHandler(code, msg)
    {
        alert("Error!!! " + code + ": " + msg);
    }
</script>
 
</head>
<!--Newsletter Signup-->
<div id="container">
<div id="news">
  <p> Broker Newsletter</p>
  <cfform name="newssignupform" action="" method="post">
  <table>
    <tr>
      <td> Name </td>
      <td><cfinput name="brokerName" type="text" required="yes" message="Your Name is Required" validateat="onserver">
      </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td> Email </td>
      <td><cfinput name="brokerEmail" type="text" required="yes" message="Your Email is Required" validateat="onserver">
      </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td colspan="2" align="center"><input type="button" onClick="javascript:submitForm()" value="Sign Up" />
      </td>
    </tr>
  </table>
  </cfform>
</div>
</div>
<!--End Newsletter Signup-->

                                              
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by: ImWorkingOnItNowPosted on 2008-12-03 at 12:41:04ID: 23089915

When I try this, the page refreshes back to itself. It does so without adding the data to the DB or displaying the response.  Is there more info I can send?

 

by: bjv211Posted on 2008-12-03 at 12:48:36ID: 23090006

Are you sure your cfinsert tag is working correctly?

 

by: ImWorkingOnItNowPosted on 2008-12-03 at 13:03:57ID: 23090154

The error I get is:
Error!!! 500: The _CF_NOCACHE fieldname cannot be found in the brokerNews table.

 

by: ImWorkingOnItNowPosted on 2008-12-03 at 13:07:38ID: 23090203

When I do this as 2 separate files, it works.

 

by: bjv211Posted on 2008-12-03 at 13:13:31ID: 23090262

Thats what it's supposed to be.  My notation was meant to indicate that you break it into 2 files 'newssignup.cfm' and 'returnnews.cfm'

 

by: bjv211Posted on 2008-12-03 at 13:16:31ID: 23090291

ImWorkingOnItNow, is it working now or are you still getting errors?

 

by: ImWorkingOnItNowPosted on 2008-12-03 at 13:25:10ID: 23090389

The errors I sent were when the two pages based on your notation in 2 files.  Would you like me to send the files?

 

by: bjv211Posted on 2008-12-03 at 13:42:27ID: 23090563

try breaking the CFINSERT tag into a regular CFQUERY:
Replace the DATASOURCENAME, tblNAME, and fieldnames to the appropriate values.

<cfquery datasource="DATASOURCE" name="insertit">
INSERT INTO tblNAME(brokerName, brokerEmail)
VALUES (<cfqueryparam cfsqltype="cf_sql_varchar" value="#form.brokerName#">, <cfqueryparam cfsqltype="cf_sql_varchar" value="#form.brokerEmail#">)
</cfquery>

                                              
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by: ImWorkingOnItNowPosted on 2008-12-03 at 14:04:28ID: 23090775

The good news is that the form information is now making it into the DB!  Unfortunately, the response doesn't appear.

 

by: bjv211Posted on 2008-12-03 at 14:11:08ID: 23090833

can you paste your code

 

by: ImWorkingOnItNowPosted on 2008-12-03 at 14:26:28ID: 23090966

Sure.  Both files are included.


<!--newsSignup.cfm-->
 
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title>Untitled Document</title>
<cfajaximport>
<script>
    function submitForm() {
        ColdFusion.Ajax.submitForm('newssignupform', 'returnNews.cfm', callback,
            errorHandler);
    }
    
    function callback(text)
    {
                container.innerHTML = text;
    }
    
    function errorHandler(code, msg)
    {
        alert("Error!!! " + code + ": " + msg);
    }
</script>
 
</head>
<body>
<!--Newsletter Signup-->
<div id="container">
<div id="news">
  <p> Broker Newsletter</p>
  <cfform name="newssignupform" action="" method="post">
  <table>
    <tr>
      <td> Name </td>
      <td><cfinput name="brokerName" type="text" required="yes" message="Your Name is Required" validateat="onserver">
      </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td> Email </td>
      <td><cfinput name="brokerEmail" type="text" required="yes" message="Your Email is Required" validateat="onserver">
      </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td colspan="2" align="center"><input type="button" onClick="javascript:submitForm()" value="Sign Up" />
      </td>
    </tr>
  </table>
  </cfform>
</div>
</div>
<!--End Newsletter Signup-->
</body>
</html>
 
 
 
 
 
<!--returnNews.cfm-->
 
<cfquery datasource="fina" name="insertit">
INSERT INTO brokerNews(brokerName, brokerEmail)
VALUES (<cfqueryparam cfsqltype="cf_sql_varchar" value="#form.brokerName#">, <cfqueryparam cfsqltype="cf_sql_varchar" value="#form.brokerEmail#">)
</cfquery>
 
<div id="newsThanks">
<cfoutput>
<p>Thank you #form.brokerName#. We will be sending our newsletter to #form.brokerEmail#.</p>
</cfoutput>
</div>
                                              
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by: bjv211Posted on 2008-12-03 at 14:50:08ID: 23091142

OK, seems like it works in some browsers and not others: the issue is the way I'm referencing the 'container' div.

Change the callback function to this.

    function callback(text)
    {
				document.getElementById('container').innerHTML = text;
    }

                                              
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by: bjv211Posted on 2008-12-03 at 14:52:13ID: 23091156

Also, you may want to change the errorHandler to something more generic (as to not reveal your code) like this:
    function errorHandler(code, msg)
    {
        alert("Please check your input and try again");
    }

 

by: ImWorkingOnItNowPosted on 2008-12-03 at 15:44:01ID: 31520283

You ROCK!  This works perfectly.  When you mentioned the "container" div, I remembered that in the page this code was going into already had a "container" div.  I changed it to "containerN" in both the script and form.  Absolutely fantastic!

By accepting this answer, do you get the points?  If not, please let me know how else to reward them to you.  

Thanks again,

-- Scott

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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