Getting rid of the "page-lag"

[Inveteratus]

While playing a number of mccodes games over the years, a lot of them exhibit a page "lag", where you perhaps commit a crime, our brave (nerve) bar goes down by one, your money goes up by $100, but you don't see these changes until the next page load. It's a very common problem and easily explained as the code as it stands outputs the user data with your bars and money *before* the page itself runs and outputs itself. So the simple solution, at the cost of a single extra query is to tweak the header.php script from:

<?php

class headers
{
    function startheaders()
    {
        // ...
    }

    function userdata($ir, $lv, $fm, $cm, $dosessh = 1)
    {
        // ...
    }

    function menuarea()
    {
        // ...
    }

    function smenuarea()
    {
        // ...
    }

    function endpage()
    {
        // ...
    }
}

to:

<?php

class headers
{
    private $_menu = '_nomenuarea';

    // new constructor to save the body data
    public function __construct()
    {
        ob_start();
    }

    // new destructor to display everything correctly
    public function __destruct()
    {
        global $db, $userid, $ir, $atkpage;

        // Get the body html
        $body = ob_get_clean();

        // Refresh the global user information array
        $sql = 'SELECT u.*, us.* FROM users u LEFT JOIN userstats us USING (userid) WHERE userid = ' . $userid;
        $ir = $db->fetch_row($db->query($sql));

        // Prep some basic variables for the header
        $fm = money_formatter($ir['money']);
        $cm = money_formatter($ir['crystals'], '');
        $lv = date('F j, Y, g:i a', $ir['laston']);

        // Output the headers and userdata
        $this->_startheaders();
        $this->_userdata($ir, $lv, $fm, $cm, $atkpage);

        // Call the correct menu
        call_user_func([$this, $this->_menu]);

        // Output the body
        echo $body;

        // And tidy up
        $this->_endpage();
    }

    // These functions are called by globals.php/sglobals.php and intentionally do nothing
    public function startheaders() { }
    public function userdata($ir, $lv, $fm, $cm, $dosessh = 1) { }
    public function menuarea() { $this->menu = "_menuarea"; }
    public function smenuarea() { $this->menu = "_smenuarea"; }
    public function endpage() { }

    // These functions are the original functions called by globals.php/sglobals.php
    // Note, they have all been prefixed with _
    private function _startheaders()
    {
        // ...
    }

    private function _userdata($ir, $lv, $fm, $cm, $dosessh = 1)
    {
        // ...
    }

    private function _menuarea()
    {
        // ...
    }

    private function _smenuarea()
    {
        // ...
    }

    private function _endpage()
    {
        // ...
    }

    // Finally add a "no-menu" for when no menu function has been called
    private function _nomenuarea()
    {
        echo '</td>';
        echo '<td width="2" class="linegrad" bgcolor="#ffffff">&nbsp;</td>';
        echo '<td width="80%" bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="top">';
        echo '<center>';
    }
}

It has the added advantage of meaning that that no longer have to call $h->endpage() anywhere in your pages, as it is automatically called.

Obviously, if you have made changes to your header.php, then you have to fiddle with it quite a bit to shoehorn this concept in, and of course you may need to adjust the new _nomenuarea() method to suit.

 

Edited August 16, 2022 by Lacuna
Code tweak

[Dayo]

This was one of the things that irritated me with McCodes and one that i aimed to fix when making GL.

Looks interesting what you put and would be good to see this in action

[Inveteratus]

It should be noted that I don't consider this a definitive solution - rather it's a workaround.

The reason being that you are adding another query, and it would probably be better to use a template manager such as Twig or maybe Smarty.

Your workflow then becomes:

• requires/includes, and bootstrap your session
• check to see if the user is permitted to access this page
• handle any POST requests and perform redirects
• handle the GET request
• push all the up-to-date information out to your templating system

[AdamHull]

I've started working on mccodes again. Currently have a game I am working through to bring back up to modern standards. 

Nice to see someone else realising for mccodes 🙂