How to recover your failed post - the hard way

I'm writing a reply in this forum, and taking my sweet old time submitting it. It's long. It's detailed. It has carefully constructed links. At this point I can't even remember what I said in it. When I finally get around to submitting it, the post fails. I hit the back button and my post text is gone! I look under the desk to make sure it didn't drop on the floor accidentally. It didn't. I'm screwed!

Ooorr am I?

I make sure not to close the tab (Firefox) with the post details. If I refresh, it gives me the "blah blah blah POST details blah refresh blah" popup window. So my text is there SOMEWHERE, right? What if I install an extension to view the POST details! Yeah, that will do it, sure! I'll just use one of those cool extension things to view the live headers and POST data as it... This extension will be installed the next time you restart Firefox. CRAP! I'm screwed!

Ooorr am I?

Code:

---

import java.io.*;
import java.net.*;

public class WebServer {
    
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        try {
            ServerSocket server = new ServerSocket(80);
            server.setSoTimeout(0);
            Socket client = server.accept();
            BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(client.getInputStream()));

            String data = null;
            while((data = in.readLine()) != null)
                System.out.println(data);
            
        } catch(Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
    
}

---

Edit c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc to add:

Code:

---

127.0.0.1    empegbbs.com

---

nbtstat -R on the command line, run my java app, refresh my browser and...

THERE YOU ARE YOU LITTLE POSTING! Get back in my textarea where you belong.

You, sir, are brilliant. If you actually constructed that during the frustration of just having lost a huge post, that makes it even better.

I'm in the habit of Ctrl-A Ctrl-C (select all, copy) my long posts before submitting. That and/or typing them in an Outlook task so I can spell check to avoid more public ridicule. Yeah yeah Firefox spell checker extension thing; someday.

Genius.

gcore your web browser and then apply a debugger to the core?

I've never run into the problem on this board, but on others I've opened a new tab, logged in in that tab, and then hit reload and said yes to it posting the same form again.

Matthew

Bravo for this great workaround.

It suck you had to MAKE this workaround to begin with, though. I think this kind of functionality should be built in to the browser. The browser shouldn't conveniently disappear the text you typed like they currently do.

The browser does. There's something about this BBS software that makes it forget. I don't know what, though.

This BBS is not the only place I've seen browsers forget my form data. It happens everywhere.

I should be able to fill out a form, navigate away from the page, and press BACK, and the form data should still be there. No matter what the form, no matter how I navigated away (whether I hit submit or not), etc.

In my experience, my data is lost in most cases when I navigate away from a form.

That is not my experience. This is the only place I can think of where that is a problem.

I've always been under the assumption this was intended, as a way to cut down on double posts. Though, what's that quote...

"Never attribute to malice, that which can be explained by stupidity."

I'm not just talking about posting to forums, although it does happen. I also mean situations where you fill out some kind of web form, let's say it's a purchase and you have to enter your address and credit card details. Then you click on a link on that page either accidentally or purposely and it leads you away from the page. Or you click on submit and there is a server error. Or some other thing. Anyway, the point is, you've navigated away from the page and the submit either didn't work or you didn't do it. And now, when you hit back, all the form fields are blank again and you have to type all that shit over again.

Despite what Bitt says, this happens ALL THE TIME and MANY DIFFERENT WEB SITES in both firefox and IE. I'm sure we've all had it happen.

You are like a walking bug attraction zone.

I have that happen too sometimes I thought it was due to the way they constructed the website.

Quote:
You are like a walking bug attraction zone.

That may be true, but I've had this happen to me many times also. Sometimes the developer of the webpage is at fault, they try to do something "smart" with the fields (using javascript, etc.) and end up clearing any previously entered data. I'm not entirely sure if that is always the case, but I'm too lazy to find the root cause of the issue.