Creating a Web Application that can handle intermittent connectivity disruption

Question

I've been tasked with designing a service that will be used by restaurants. We'll be recording some input, that will be uploaded to our servers for later analysis. My initial thought was to just use a typical web application so that we don't need to worry about software updates, but that brings up the question:

What's the best way to deal with the internet going off for hours, and/or the browser being closed accidentally during that time? Is it possible to create a web app that operates both online and offline, and IMPORTANTLY, when in offline mode caches any input so that it is uploaded later when possible?

If a web app is not the best solution, what would you recommend?

Answer 1

HTML5, offline / client-side storage. Make your "Web Application" runs after collecting everything needed from the server, and submit only the required requests when it gets online.