Using jQuery to store the state of a complicated form

Question

I have a rather complicated form with many \"steps\" in it that are filled in by the user. Some steps (think of them as form segments) have default options, but on clicking

Answer 1

You may want to just put the data that is non-default into a json, then send it through a post request to the server to be saved.

So, once the person goes back to the page you automatically look to see if they have something saved, and you can either ask if they want to use it or populate the form from the saved data.

Saving default values is a waste of bandwidth, as you won't be changing it from what the form was when it was loaded anyway.

UPDATE:

To save it as a JSON I think it would be easy enough to just build it up into a long string since the format is easy, so you will just send everything as a single string.

You may want to also save the stage they are on, or, automatically save as they go to each stage, which may be a better option, in case their computer crashes they won't have to start at the beginning again, but you may want that enabled by a checkbox, to turn on auto-save.