Old programmer, but new to web programming - teaching myself PHP/Javascript/AJAX/MySQL. I've come across an issue that I would like to have someone point me in the right direction; not necessarily solve it for me. I'm not sure this is the right forum, but it's a start.

Writing a web application for my home network - a word game for me and my kids.

Player 1 opens the page, enters their name, and hits submit. I then XMLHttpRequest to a PHP file, that does a select on a MySQL dataset, looking for any open games based on nothing being in games.player_name_2. The layout of games is:

game_id
player_name_1
player_name_2

Not finding any, I then insert a record, get the game_id, and begin polling every three seconds, until player_name_2 is populated.

This works, sorta. I create the record in the table correctly, and the polling fires off every three seconds. I alert myself the game_id and the opponent name every time, and they show me that my opponent hasn't signed in. I'll get to the sorta part later.

Player 2 opens the page, enters their name, and hits submit. I look for open games as above, find that player 1 is ready to play, update the record. I get confirmation back on this page (I alert myself game_id and opponent name).

Player 1's page continues to poll every three seconds. It continues to act as if Player 2 never entered the game.

Now, keep reading; don't assume that my polling logic is wrong. Remember that 'sorta works' comment earlier? Here's the odd thing. When player 1 opens another Internet Explorer, my game page then gets a response back from XMLHttpRequest with the game_id and the opponent's name.

It sorta works, but only if I open another Internet Explorer.

What are the possible causes of this behavior? Does it sound like a PHP issue? MySQL? AJAX?

I am baffled, and any help would be appreciated. If this belongs elsewhere, please point me there.

Thanks in advance.

dal

I know the answer to my question.

I was using 'GET' when I was opening my xmlhttprequest. This was allowing the response to be cached, and I kept getting my initial response. I changed it to 'POST', and it works.

If anyone knows why opening another internet explorer would cause my initial GET to not cache the response, thus allowing my program to carry on, I would appreciate learning about it.

Thanks.

dal

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