re: generating HTTP post from form

Anon

Hi All

I have written a simple HTML form consisting of 3 fields:

name
phonenumber
message

When the form is submitted, it calls a script. I would like this script to then send these 4 variables as an HTTP post, i.e send the results to

http://www.server.com/smsscript.php?personsname=$name&personsnumber=$phonenumber&personsmessage=$message

and then send the person back to a conf page, rather than to the page above.

Thanks very much
Dave

factory21

If all you want to do is basically redirect the user, you can use the header("Location:") syntax and forward the user to the desired script and, at the script destination, forward the user again. The only time you can't use it is if there's intermediary text you display to the user (like "Thanks! click here to proceed").

Forwarding will also re-send ALL cgi parameters.

The only downside to this approach is that some browsers popup a dialog to the user asking if they want to re-post.

Another way that's a little more flexible and probably better in the long run, is to take all the post variables and stick them in the session...

Anon

Hi Eric thanks for your response.

Not sure if i explained myslef properly the first time, basically I want to send a post the an external script (with variables added) but the user somewhere else, since I don't want them seeing the post that is sent.

Basically it's an external sms script that has our username and password tagged on it as well as the variables, and would be easy for someone to take our details, therefore i'd like the post to this script done in the background and the user to to another local page.

cheers
dave

factory21

Ah, in that case, you probably want your script to re-issue an HTTP request...All you need to do is reform the input parameters with your additional parameters into a GET URL request and then use fopen or include (see http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.include.php) which allows you to specify a URL. If you use fopen, you can issue the request and just ignore the result, or if you use include, the result will automatically be sent to the output stream!

(I've never done the above before, but it should work...in theory...)

Anon

Hi Eric

Thanks for your reply. I'm sure I'm nearly there but my script keeps giving me errors.

The variables I want to pass from a simple HTML form are $phone and $message and I want to add them to an external url in the format

http://www.server.com/script.cfm?username=xxxxxxx&password=xxxxxxx&phonenumer=$phone&message=$message

But want the user to go to thankyou.php locally. I can't get it to send the local user - have tried everythin I've thought of. Would you be able to write the code down in a reply for me - if it's going to be comlicated I'm more than willing to pay to have it done.

Many Thanks