textarea limit?

[EdwardMartinIII]

I'm using the technique listed here, which is one of my own:

http://www.tek-tips.com/faqs.cfm?fid=3358

to email the contents of a form.

In the form I'm using, I have four TEXTAREA fields. I've noticed that when those fields get full, they don't tend to mail. Specifically, when I hit the [send] button, the browser does NOT build the mail message.

Some data:

Field1: 175 characters
Field2: 175 characters
Field3: 174 characters
Field4: 174 characters

fails, but

Field1: 175 characters
Field2: 174 characters
Field3: 174 characters
Field4: 174 characters

succeeds.

Field1: 349 characters
Field2: 349 characters
Field3: 0 characters
Field4: 0 characters

fails, but

Field1: 349 characters
Field2: 348 characters
Field3: 0 characters
Field4: 0 characters

succeeds.

Field1: 698 characters
Field2: 0 characters
Field3: 0 characters
Field4: 0 characters

fails, but

Field1: 697 characters
Field2: 0 characters
Field3: 0 characters
Field4: 0 characters

succeeds.

So, it LOOKS as if there's a COMBINED limit in the TEXTAREA fields of 697 characters.

This... this... makes no sense to me. I thought TEXTAREAS were basically unlimited and why in the name of shattered panda brains would they be INTERACTING with each other in this way?

Help!


Edward

"Cut a hole in the door. Hang a flap. Criminy, why didn't I think of this earlier?!" -- inventor of the cat door

 

[EdwardMartinIII]

I just tried adding text to some of the other inputs, which were simple TEXT fields (not TEXTAREA) and as soon as the TOTAL character count exceeded 697 in the whole form, it refused to email.

Any ideas why? This is pretty goofy as a limit.

Thanks!


Edward

"Cut a hole in the door. Hang a flap. Criminy, why didn't I think of this earlier?!" -- inventor of the cat door

 

[EdwardMartinIII]

My complete OOMA guess is that, in the above referenced FAQ, there's a single component (such as the hidden field in ProxyForm) that DOES have some sort of character limit.

But I can't figure out where I'm bottlenecking -- only under what circumstances.


Edward

"Cut a hole in the door. Hang a flap. Criminy, why didn't I think of this earlier?!" -- inventor of the cat door

 

[ChrisHunt]

There's no limit on the length of text areas, I have passed thousands of characters from them.

Your technique extracts the contents of several fields, stitches them together in javascript and passes them on to a mail client as GET parameters.

My guess is that it's either the javascript string or (most likely) the mail client that chokes after a certain number of characters.

I'd suggest going server-side and avoiding all these issues.

-- Chris Hunt
Webmaster & Tragedian
Extra Connections Ltd

 

[ChrisHunt]

Oh, and I smiled at HungryMan@DonnerParty.com, I wonder how many people pick up on that allusion?


-- Chris Hunt
Webmaster & Tragedian
Extra Connections Ltd

 

[EdwardMartinIII]

Thanks Chris,

I would LOVE to go server-side, but this is an all-internal site.

I'm currently vetting an InfoPath solution, which seems okay. InfoPath seems somehow more primitive as far as form construction than, say, HTML, and the editing of a form is a real bear -- you can't insert rows in the middle of a table and so forth. Ugh.

But, unless I get some real tools, I'm going to have to go in a route like this.

In my Perfect World®, I'd have them fill out a form and the data would be pushed into a Word document pulled from a template, and then emailed to an address specified on the form.

That would be perfect.

Until I can figure out how to do THAT, I settle for the form emailing me its contents, and I manually open the template, populate the fields, and then email the finished Word doc to the person.


Edward

"Cut a hole in the door. Hang a flap. Criminy, why didn't I think of this earlier?!" -- inventor of the cat door

 

[BillyRayPreachersSon]

I would LOVE to go server-side, but this is an all-internal site.

Huh? That statement makes no sense at all.

Intranet ("all-internal") sites are mostly built with dynamic, server-side technology.

Perhaps you mis-understood what Chris meant, as I'd agree with him that a server-side solution would be the easiest way to bypass the character limit of GET requests.

Dan



Coedit Limited - Delivering standards compliant, accessible web solutions

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http://www.codecouch.com/dan/

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The Out Atheism Campaign

 

[EdwardMartinIII]

Huh? That statement makes no sense at all. Intranet ("all-internal") sites are mostly built with dynamic, server-side technology."

Mostly indeed.

Not this one.

That is, sure, we have a NETWORK, and these are HTML files on the NETWORK, but there is no web server, either "real" or "virtual" such that I can just run a quick call to, say, Sendmail.

But at the moment it's less of an issue -- I've set up an InfoPath document that does the emailing of the form content.

Edward

"Cut a hole in the door. Hang a flap. Criminy, why didn't I think of this earlier?!" -- inventor of the cat door