Dropping Data???

I'm completely confused over this one.

I've been using web assist data assist for many years on many, many projects and I've NEVER run into anything like this.

Developed a product database for a client. Fully tested the online data assist forms and everything worked fine. Had the client upload their data. After many hours of uploading, the client discovered much of the data they input was not retained. The individual records were there, but the information within was not.

I have fully tested and retested on my system (Mac using FireFox 5 browser) and cannot duplicate their issue. Everything seems to work perfectly fine for me. They are on an older PC using IE (can't seem to tell me the version). Could that be an issue? I know there are display issues with older browsers but I've never run into form issues in which everything appears to function properly but data is just lost.

Suggestions for troubleshooting??? Please Help!

double check that the form elements in the page are all configured correctly with a value attribute, even if the value is blank:

<input type="text" name="first_name" value="" >

I have seen some older versions of IE have issues passing form data with fields that did not include the value attribute.


make sure your client is actually clicking the forms submit button with the mouse rather than hitting the enter key to submit the form.

have them try the form with Fire fox instead of IE to see if the problem persists.

Thanks Jason. I'll give that a shot.

One other quick question that may have something to do with this, should the MySQL field default be set to "Null" as a general rule?

there is not a general rule for this, there are really many different factors to take into account.

I guess the closest to a _general_ rule for a default value of null would be this:

Use NULL For the default value on a column that Does NOT allow blank, but you do not require in your form.

Well, after a long delay due to the client being out of town and then too busy to deal with it, I've finally found the problem, after a trip to the clients to watch over their shoulder what they were doing. Apparently, in the fields meant for pricing (i.e. "3.25") they were trying to also insert text (i.e. "$3.25/ft"). The MySQL field was set to accept a decimal number, and would reject their entry, leaving the field with 0.00!

So after hours of pulling my hair out, it came down to a usability issue, not a technical problem!

You could add spry validation or server validation to give an error message in that case to make sure that the user is able to identify the problem more easily. Thank you for the update.