What is the best practice to display a list of items that may change via HTTP POST (PHP + MySQL)

Question

I am creating an inventory system for myself that contains a list of items (with description, count, last date used, etc.) that also contains a status for the item. At the most basic level, I am listing all items from a MySQL query (SELECT * FROM Items), along with their status in a SELECT HTML FORM element (int datatype, 0/1/2 status indicator).

I want to be able to update any item in this list without having to parse through every item that was listed and do a comparison against the SQL server's contents. I would imagine this is not the best practice and the better way to accomplish this would be to compile a list of items that are changing and submit them via HTTP POST. Is this correct? What would be the best way to accomplish this?

Answer 1

Use Ajax. Clean and simple. Fast way to implement is using JQuery.

<select id="target">
    <option value="option1" selected="selected">Option 1</option>
    <option value="option2">Option 2</option>
  </select>

javascript

$('#target').change(function () {
$.ajax({

    type: "POST",
    url: "page.php",
    data: 'id=something' ,
    success: function (msg) {
        //after php response
    }
});

});

See change and ajax