[Phpmyadmin-devel] About the AJAXification of the index editor

[Rouslan Placella]

Hi Thilanka (and everyone else),

You filed bug #3350790 on the tracker, which I looked into and fixed
earlier. This also gave me a chance to look at the AJAXification of the
index editor, which as I can see from your blog you have deemed
completed. Anyway, I found some issues in your implementation and
thought you might want to know about them.

First, the JS errors from bug #3350790 are gone, but the functionality
from checkIndexName() function in indexes.js only works in the QA_3_4
branch. This is due to the AJAXification that you did. That function was
written in plain JS, when there was no jQuery or AJAX. Line 44 in that
file should have been a dead giveaway that the function was about to
break (onload = checkIndexName;), since a browser does not fire an
onload event for AJAX requests. Anyway, I think that the
checkIndexName() function should be rewritten in jQuery and then called
inside the AJAX request from tbl_structure.js. Also there is some inline
JS in tbl_indexes.php, which you may want to rewrite in jQuery if you
will be rewriting checkIndexName().

Now for the fun stuff...


Try this:
* go to `sakila` db
* go to `actor` table
* go to structure tab
* click on "Edit" link for the primary key
* in the ajax dialog click 'Cancel'
* click again on "Edit" link for the primary key
* in the dialog click on "Go" (to add more rows to the table)
Expected result:
* 1 row is added to the table of indices
Actual result:
* The table of indices is cloned and 1 row is added to the first table


Another thing is that the AJAX dialog should really be modal (you can
make the dialog modal by adding "modal: true," to the dialog options in
jQuery).
Try this:
* go to `sakila` db
* go to `actor` table
* go to structure tab
* click on "Edit" link for the primary key
* without closing the AJAX dialog, move it out of the way
* click on "Edit" link for the `idx_actor_last_name` index
* inside this new dialog click "Save"
Expected result:
* the dialog for `idx_actor_last_name` is submitted
Actual result:
* the dialog for the primary key is submitted


Another bug:
* go to `sakila` db
* go to `actor` table
* go to structure tab
* click on "Edit" link for the primary key
* set all rows in the table to "--ignore--"
* click "Save"
Expected result:
* An error message
Actual result:
* An empty AJAX message


Another thing is that the new function that you wrote to handle the
SPATIAL indices doesn't actually work. The problem is that its event is
attached using jQuery's 'bind' method, which is unsuitable for your
purposes. I think that you should use the 'live' method that allows for
late binding. After you do that, you will notice that the function still
doesn't work as expected. This is because in this function you assume
that you will always have one instance of each element that you
reference by ID. However once the DOM has registered an element with a
particular ID (open a dialog), even if you destroy that element and
recreate it (close dialog/ open new dialog), the DOM will still
reference the original, and now non-existent, element. The best way to
deal with this is to use classes, then search for objects inside some
common parent element.

I guess that this is quite a mouthful of an email, hope it helps.

Bye,
Rouslan