The HTTP Status 122 Error in IE7 in Ajax Apps

Summary: Don’t use the GET method in Ajax Apps, if you can void it, because IE7 craps out with more than 2032 characters in a get string.

Here’s the page that craps out at 2033 characters with IE7:
http://www.codebelay.com/status122/?i_limit=2033

You won’t see the error with other browsers.

Here’s the page that’s okay:
http://www.codebelay.com/status122/?i_limit=2000

What’s going on here?

Sometimes you’ll write a piece of Javascript that uses prototype and looks like this:

  var url = '/status122/listener/?stuff=' + encodeURIComponent($('js_stuff').innerHTML);

  // This is where we send our raw ratings for parsing
  var ajax = new Ajax.Updater(
	 'jskitdecoded',
	 url,
	 {
		method: 'get',
		onComplete: showResponse
	 }
  );

If you print http.status you get an HTTP Status of 122. WTF?

What’s going on here is that IE7 sets a limit of 2032 characters on GET strings, so you have to do a POST instead like so:

  var getvar = encodeURIComponent($('js_stuff').innerHTML);
  var url = '/status122/listener/';

  // This is where we send our raw data for parsing
  // If we use method: 'get', IE7 will return a 122, but
  // b/c Firefox is RFC2616 compliant and realizes that
  // there is no minimum length for a URI, we get success.
  // Here we use method: 'post' b/c IE7 is lame.
  var ajax = new Ajax.Updater(
	 'jskitdecoded',
	 url,
	 {
		method: 'post',
		postBody: 'stuff=' + getvar,
		onComplete: showResponse
	 }
  );

I hope this helps.

What Ajax quirks have you run into?