I have created a web site that allows for the submission of HTML forms with multiple stages of form authorisation. For example a Employee Submits a Leave Application which is then Authorised by a Supervisor. Multiple users may have the permission to authorise a form at any particular stage.
The issue i have run into is only 1 user should be able to edit the form at any stage.
My idea was on page load set a IsLocked column in the database to true when the page loads and i can use this to see if anyone else has it locked. I would then set it back to 0 when the person leaves the page. A person can leave the page by modifying the form and clicking submit or just by navigating away.
I can easily lock the page or check if its locked using the document.ready function and a ajax request or doing it straight in PHP however i am stuck in finding a way to remove the lock when the page gets redirected.
I have looked into the following methods:
- http://www.bennadel.com/blog/1520-binding-events-to-non-dom-objects-with-jquery.htm (Using a custom function which constantly checks to see if the href has changed. I can't seem to get this function to work in Chrome, Firefox, IE)
- https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Events/popstate (The problem us it only called when the forward or back buttons in web browser are used)
Question: How can l reliably get when a user has left the page? Is there a better way to handle the form locking mechanism?
