My application forms all disappeared - https://visaonweb.diplomatie.be/en

Shellen

Hi, I was trying to fill in the visa application forms on this website today: https://visaonweb.diplomatie.be/en

After I saved the 2 forms I have filled in successfully, I clicked the "list of your applications" button.Then there's error message "DataTables warning: table id=vaMyList - Ajax error. For more information about this error, please see http://datatables.net/tn/7" showing on the page, and all the forms I have filled in disappeared.

Based on the error message, I found your websites. But I don't really understand what should I do to fix the error, to let the Begium visa system show the application forms I have filled in again.

Could you please help me? My email address is shellen1211@hotmail.com.

Shellen

The screenshot looks like this

kthorngren

There is an error coming from the server when fetching the table data. The link in the error provides troubleshooting steps:
http://datatables.net/tn/7

You will likely need to look at the web server logs to diagnose the error.

Kevin

Shellen

Hi Kevin,

Thank you so much for offering the answer.
Unfortunately I have very limited knowledge of IT science and technology, I don't really understand what is "look at the web server logs" (I'm so sorry that I don't understand these basic IT knowledge....)

Is it possible that you could explain a little bit more in detail?

Kind regards,
Xuechen Wang

kthorngren

If its not your website then it would be best to contact the support for the website so they can debug their application.

Kevin

Shellen

Thank you Kevin.

It is indeed not my website at all. So it is not something I can fix by myself on my computer then?
Understood, I will contact the website support.

Thank you so much for your explaination!

Kind regards,
Xuechen

allan

So it is not something I can fix by myself on my computer then?

Correct. It is something for the author of the website to fix. If they need help doing so they can contact us here, but it is an error on the website. If you aren't the web developer, the best you can do is get in touch with them and report the error.

Allan

RichardD2

This does lead to a suggestion: should the error popup show something slightly more user-friendly (and possibly configurable), with the technical message and link being logged in the browser console instead?

kthorngren

@RichardD2 Possibly the DataTable.ext.errMode is what you are looking for.

Kevin

allan

I've thought about it before, and even experimenting we making it throw to the console instead, but the number of developers who simply didn't look at the console... Well, it was disappointing. I wanted the error messages to be right in the face of the developers (with the tech note link so they can hopefully resolve it themselves, although, again the number of posts from devs who don't read the tech note...). The end user should never see the error message alert since any issues that would cause it to show should have been solved during the site's development.

If a developer does know what they are doing, they can use DataTable.ext.errMode as Kevin says to use their own logging and reporting for errors. That's the preferred approach.

Allan