atom thoughts

So, I noticed I was receiving a random error from the Gift Hat by one of my ajax auto complete forms.

An ajax submit was occurring without any data, which is impossible from within a browser since a user has to enter data for the ajax form to submit.

Here is the Ajax code in question:

new Ajax.Autocompleter('find_hat', 'find_hat_auto_complete', '/hat/auto_complete_for_find_hat', {indicator:'indicator'})

Thanks to my Exception Notifier setup, I was receiving very detailed emails when the error occurred including this interesting tidbit:

HTTP_FROM : googlebot(at)googlebot.com

It turns out, the googlebot traverses your Ajax code, so beware of the Googlebot or any other random non-human agents. They may be doing things that would otherwise be impossible so plan for these cases as well when building your web apps.