An action function provides a way to submit a form programmatically via a JavaScript function call. When an action function is executed from a JavaScript event handler, the default browser behavior continues once the event handler has completed. If the event handler is attached to a Visualforce component that submits the form, an onclick handler for an <apex:commandLink /> or <apex:commandButton /> component, for example, the default browser behavior is to continue with the form submission. This results in a race condition as to which form submission request will be processed first by the server and will often produce unexpected results.
In this recipe, we will create a Visualforce page to execute a search for accounts matching a user-entered string of characters. When the user clicks on the button to start the search, a JavaScript function is invoked that checks the number of characters entered. If two or more characters have been entered, the search...
