Help! Post data lost when I use sessions

chrisbaldwin

After many hours of grief I am forced to turn to the this forum!
Here is my problem:
When I submit my form data using the post methode I cannot click the browser back button and edit my info as it is lost (I get told to refresh the page and all fields are empty). OK, now I am well aware of the difference between post and get and both do not work. Before you jump to conclusions I have to bring up the biggest point - everything was working fine (ie I could click the browser back button and edit my info and repost using post or get) BEFORE I started using sessions! And when I remove the session_start() function from my pages then everything works fine again. So there is something that I am not aware of about HTML forms and php sessions.
If you want to see the example just visit http://findatutor.org (I'm the webmaster) and you will see that if you post your details without filling in all required fields and try to go back to edit, then all your info is lost! - This is very bad as you may have wrighten a long discription and all will be lost).
I am using sessions as a means of user authentication, so sessions is very important and I can't just leave them out.

I would appretiate any help you could offer.
Thanks.
Chris

danzene

instead of having the user click the back button, why not display the incomplete form with the posted data.
<input name="field" type="text" value="<? if ($incomplete) echo $field ?>" >

write a function to see if all required fields have data, and assing the return value to $incomplete. the rest should be ez.

chrisbaldwin

Thank you very much. Excellent idea and I am sure this methode is commonly used. I will apply it tonight. What I did in the meantime is caught all the variables on the receiving page and have the person click a 'Go Back' button with posted all the variables back to the form on the previouse page. Works well but some of the fields in the first form are function generated and that means having to play around with globle variables and in my design this could get messy and dosen't really solve the problem.

Thanks for you suggestion!

Note on prviouse post:
I would still like to know what the deal is with session_start() and methode=POST or GET from my previouse post. Why can't the page reload with the variables? If anyone know please let me know.

Thanks again.
Chris

Anon

That's a wonderful way to do it, and I have most of my forms that way, but what about the users who instinctively click "BACK"? The real problem arises when the clients call and report it as a bug all day. I can tell them EVERY time that they can't use the back button, but that seems like a ghetto solution. Surely there must be a way to use sessions and still retain form data?