Curing the “Back Button Blues”

Question

Ever stumbled on a tutorial that you feel is of great value but not quite explained properly? That\'s my dilemma. I know THIS TUTORIAL has some value but I just can\'t get it. <

Answer 1

If you do not understand my article then you should take a close look at figure 1 which depicts a typical scenario where a user passes through a series of screens – logon, menu, list, search, add and update. When I describe a movement of FORWARDS I mean that the current screen is suspended while a new screen is activated. This happens when the user presses a link in the current screen. When I describe a movement as BACKWARDS I mean that the user terminates the current screen (by pressing the QUIT or SUBMIT button) and returns to the previous screen, which resumes processing from where it left off. This may include incorporating any changes made in the screen which has just been terminated.

This is where maintaining a page stack which is independent of the browser history is crucial – the page stack is maintained by the application and is used to verify all requests. These may be valid as far as the browser is concerned, but may be identified by the application as invalid and dealt with accordingly.

The page stack is maintained by two functions:

• scriptNext() is used to process a FORWARDS movement, which adds a new entry at the end of the stack and activates the new entry.
• scriptPrevious() is used to process a BACKWARDS movement, which removes the last entry from the stack and re-activates the previous entry.

Now take the situation in the example where the user has navigated to page 4 of the LIST screen, gone into the ADD screen, then returned to page 5 of the LIST screen. The last action in the ADD screen was to press the SUBMIT button which used the POST method to send details to the server which were added to the database, after which it terminated automatically and returned to the LIST screen.

If you therefore press the BACK button while in page 5 of the LIST screen the browser history will generate a request for the last action on the ADD screen, which was a POST. This is a valid request as far as the browser is concerned, but is not as far as the application is concerned. How can the application decide that the request is invalid? By checking with its page stack. When the ADD screen was terminated its entry was deleted from the page stack, therefore any request for a screen which is not in the page stack can always be treated as invalid. In this case the invalid request can be redirected to the last entry in the stack.

The answers to your questions should therefore be obvious:

• Q: Where do you call each function?
• A: You call the scriptNext() function when the user chooses to navigate forwards to a new screen, and call the scriptPrevious() function when the user terminates the current screen.
• Q: Which function should be called first and which next, and which third?
• A: Each function is called in response to an action chosen by the user, so only one function is used at a time.
• Q: Will all functions be called in all files in an application?
• A: All functions should be available in all files in an application, but only called when chosen by the user.

It you wish to see these ideas in action then you can download my sample application.