What's the best way to send user-inputted text via AJAX to Google App Engine?
- by Cuga
I'm developing in Google App Engine (python sdk) and I want to use jQuery to send an Ajax request to store an answer to a question.
What is the best way to send this data to the server? Currently I have:
function storeItem(question_id) {
var answerInputControl = ".input_answer_"+question_id;
var answer_text = $(answerInputControl).text();
$.ajax({
type: "POST",
url: "store_answer.html",
data: "question="+question_id,
success: function(responseText){
alert("Retrieved: " + responseText);
}
});
}
This takes a question Id and provides it to the server via the query string. But on the server-side, I'm unable to access the content of the answer control which I want to store. Without Ajax, I'm able to perform this operation with the following:
class StoreAnswers(webapp.RequestHandler):
def post(self):
question_id = self.request.get("question_id")
answer_text = self.request.get("input_answer" + question_id)
But when doing this call through Ajax, my answer_text is empty.
Do I need to send the contents of this control as part of the data with the Ajax request?
Do I add the control itself to the query string? Its contents? Does it matter that the content might be a few hundred characters long? Is this the most-recommended practice?
If sending it as a query string, what's the best way to escape the content so that a malicious user doesn't harm the system?
