A break from the tutorial: Intuitive stuff

Hey guys! Let's take a break from the bombarding of information, and let's do something interesting. Let's talk about some of the features that are taken for granted in all the giant websites. You may already have noticed them. If not, double back and check them out. We'll also see how to implement them in your website.

The "Keep me logged in":
Many websites like Facebook and Gmail offer this option at the time of login. What it does is even if you close the browser/tab/window, the next time you open it it opens on your homepage. Even more fascinating, if you try to log in from some other device it you're not logged in, and you even get an alert that someone tried to access your account from an unknown location. Let's see how this is done in steps:

• When you log in, cookies with your username are stored in your browser. If you close it and reopen it, and access that site again, it checks for that-site-specific cookies. If they are there, they take you to your homepage. Else, you're redirected to the login page.
• To prevent multiple people accessing the account at the same type, the session is logged in to the database. The username/email is unique, so only one session of that name can be logged in to the database. If another one tries, it captures the IP address, denies it access and warns the user. (We'll see how to track IP addresses in the next article)
• When you log in, it notes down your IP address. It is added to the list of addresses from which you frequently access that site.
• On log out, it deletes the cookies and logs you out of the database.

The "Display n search results":

This is very easy. Just maintain a count of how many results are wanted. Assume the form method is GET:

count = int (request.GET['count'])

temp = 0

for row in cur/cur.fetchall ():

    if temp == count:

        break

    else:

        print row[0]

        temp += 1


Opening a new tab on hyperlink or button press:
For hyperlink: <a href = "foo/bar.html" target = "_blank">
For button press: <form action = "/foo/" method = "GET" target = "_blank">

The target = "_blank" does the trick. Note that it have to be inserted into form attributes and not the button's.

That's it for today! Tell me if I missed anything.
Cheers!