Looking for the fastest way to collect form data

Question

I am developing an application in Flex. There are 20+ 'pages', each with its own form. I need to collect all the entered data and pass it to an API method. What I am wondering is when I should begin to pass the data and what the best way to collect it might be. I was thinking of instantiating a class

public class myCollectorClass

The API method has 10 parameters, 4 of which are not determined by the forms. Of the 6 remaining parameters, 5 are simple strings with few options. Those are not the difficult part. It is the last parameter that is the most difficult to work with:

public var myDataSet:DataSet[]; //DataSet is a data type from the API

The forms fall into two categories: Geographical Data which controls the geographical area of the API return values. And Search Data which controls the type of data returned within the geographical parameters. For instance, if you are looking for an IT company in the US Zip code 93003.

As you can see, the geo and search parameters are arrays not simple strings and a typical collection will contain multiple zip coes, area codes SCBA codes etc., as well as hundreds of search parameters.

Would it be better for me to pass each selected value to the array each time a value is entered?

btnAddParameter.addEventListener(Event.CLICK, dataHandler)

Or pass all of the values at the end right before an order is placed?

for each dataContainer in myClass
{
    var dataObj:Object;
    dataContainer.value = dataObj;
    myParamArray.addItem(dataObject)
}

Answer 1

I would opt for an item-by-item feed to the server. This not only protects against the poor user having to re-input all of that stuff, it also gives you the chance to do on-the-fly modifications of the form.

Answer 2

I like your idea of saving everything in a "collector class" for two reasons. One, it makes sense to perform everything at once at the end of the process, so you may as well have easy access to all of the information collected along the way. And two, having everything that you need stored away allows you to create state within your application. That way, if a user wants to exit the program and come back later (to finish all 20 pages), you could easily serialize their data to an external data source, then deserialize it back into the application when they're ready to continue.