Clicking on "Run Query" for a cached query before the cached results appear on the screen returns a json object instead of the query results

Question

Clicking on "run query" for a cached query before the cached results appear on the screen returns a JSON object instead of the query results. Example:

{
  "running": true,
  "job_id": "76ba1e4f-0625-45a8-93fa-e28ed481c528"
}

---

Since folks seem to be struggling reproducing this and clicking Run Query reasonably quickly, here is a screen recording showing the issue:

It can be more easily reproduced if your Internet connection is slow, such as if you're on a DSL or 3G network.

I ran into this issue well over a hundred times and I wasn't trying to click fast or push the system. Sometimes the cached results take a few seconds to load.

Answer 1

It's by-design for the following reason:

It is by-design because that is how it has been since 2010-ish and has worked 99,99999% of the time. The site needs javascript to work, it doesn't have a fallback for proper operation without javascript. Maybe the submit button should start out disabled and only be enabled when DataStackExchnage.ready runs but then again if time is spent it might be better spent on solving issues that are beneficial to more general use, not edge cases.

– rene

The same user gives some additional information about the root of the issue:

This has nothing todo with the result being cached or not. What you're seeing is caused by the javascript in query.js, specially the DataStackExchange.ready event, not having run yet. Until that ready event is executed the Run button is a plain form submit (the action attribute on the form points to it) to the query controller run endpoint and that endpoint only returns json to be processed by javascript. Conditions between your browser and data.se might cause slow resolving, loading and executing javascript