5 Comments:

• Slightly offtopic, but I thought of a simple way you could lessen the load on your server.
  
  You mentioned in your explaination that you were using the onkeyup event to send the requests. A way of stopping the /. weenies from borking your server would be to change the code in the code to the following:
  
  var idTimer = null;
  
  function SendQuery(key)
  {
  var url = "http://www.objectgraph.com/dictionary/dict.aspx?k=" + key;
  
  // Stop the previous timer (if any) from firing.
  if (idTimer != null)
  window.clearTimeout(idTimer);
  
  // This code is ran if a key hasn't been pressed for quarter a second.
  var handler = function()
  {
  Initialize();
  
  if (req != null)
  {
  req.onreadystatechange = Process;
  req.open("GET", url, true);
  req.send(null);
  }
  };
  
  // Set the handler to run after a quarter a second.
  idTimer = window.setTimeout(handler, 250);
  }
  
  I wish Blogger allowed preformatted blocks. :-(
  
  This makes it wait until the user has stopped typing for a reasonable period (250ms) before firing back to the server to pull stuff from the dictionary.
  
  Note that I just typed this up off the top of my head and haven't tested it, so you should make sure it works before you put it online.

  By  Keith Gaughan, at 8:12 PM  

• Cool Idea,
  
  the only problem i have is, if the person just leaves the computer idle with some text already typed in the box, wouldnt that keep on hitting the server?

  By  Anonymous, at 6:54 AM  

• No, once the event fires, it should disappear. Timeout isn't for recurring events, just once-offs. Even then, you could cancel it once it fires even if it did.

  By  Keith Gaughan, at 7:53 AM  

• Cool,
  
  I will implement this and post the source code.
  Thank you for the suggestion.

  By  gavi, at 9:47 PM  

• I really like what you've done here. I will probably dream tonight as I sleep about this program hooking up with onelook.com

  By  Anonymous, at 10:51 PM  

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