The damned reloads...

Anon

Hello,
I won't rush in details :
I have a form and when the form is posted there can be some situations such as the lack of filling required forms and the visitor has to return to the form page by using the browser's back button.
But when visitor returned to the form page, all of the written is gone, and form is cleared.
Indeed the visitor wants to correct the fault and not to fill all the fields again.
But the page is reloaded and the form is cleared when returned.
I realized that PHPNuke and some scripts had got rid of that problem, I examined those scripts bu couln't find anything to solve this.

van__

To my knowledge hitting the back button means you're SOL for HTML form input.

But, Hey... I don't know cause I've always just had PHP regenerate the form and echo out little nasty things like "HEY F$#$#*HEAD!!! Fill in your gawddamned name!" and such, so the guy on the other end knew what they did wrong rather than having to use a brain cell and figure it out.

...but, hey...
It might be possible to do what you want, I've never used it, and generally, IE will give a nasty message if you try to back up on a POST request.

Anon

This isn't what I want.
I want to avoid the loss of all the visitor wrote. To regenerate the form isn't so much different from the auto-reload of the form page. At last all the content of the form is lost again.

van__

At last all the content of the form is lost again.

Not if you have PHP echo it out...
I never force a user to rewrite any valid input... which is what I was trying to explain.

Here's a simple form template that gets parsed with user submitted data:

<h2>User Registration</h2>
<font class="user_error">{USER_ERROR}</font>
<p class="pText"> Please provide us with your desired user name and password.</p>
<table width=380 border=0 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0 class="formText">

<FORM ACTION="{FORM_ACTION}" METHOD="POST" class="floatMenuForm">
<tr>
<td align="left" valign="top">User Name:<br>
<input type="text" name="uName" size=12 maxlength=20 value="{uName}" class="smallFormBox">
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left" valign="top">Password:<br>
<input type="password" name="uPass" size=20 maxlength=20 class="smallFormBox">
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left" valign="top">Confirm Password:<br>
<input type="password" name="uPassConf" size=20 maxlength=20 class="smallFormBox">
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p> </p>
<input type="hidden" name="uMode" value="{uMode}">
<input type="hidden" name="ctrlTab" value="{TABLE_PSWD}">
<input type="hidden" name="noLogin" value="true">
<input type="hidden" name="uID" value="{uID}">
{PASS_DATA}
<input type="image" src="/common/_img/post_buttons/submit.gif" alt="submit form">
</td>
</tr>
</FORM>
</table>

...hope that helps enlighten you on how you may plop out your data back to the user with PHP.

Anon

It may be worth using the Header cache pragma. You can "force" the page to cache by setting a resonably long expiry on it.

Good examples are :

http://www.html-faq.com/faq.php?category=serverbasics&fid=114

HTH

Justin

Anon

header("Expires: Mon, 26 Jul 2003 05:00:00 GMT");

I didn't work. And I can't find the rigt parametres to reverse them. They are set for uncaching and indeed that is the last thing I want it to happen.

header("Last-Modified: " . gmdate("D, d M Y H:i:s") ." GMT");
header("Cache-Control: no-cache, must revalidate");
header("Pragma: no-cache");
header("Cache-Control: post-check=0, pre-check=0");

daarius

when form is posted. keep the data in hidden fields. and provide a submit button to actually go back and re-edit the data. so simply submit the hidden text back in to required form fields. this is the best solution and is browser independant solution too. cos even if you fix that problem with IE, netscape 4 will always refresh the page when you hit back.

Anon

I think I found out the problem.
Check it out this script is working as I need.I mean that it doesn't lose its contents when I come back.

<? if (1)
{
echo "Something";

echo "<form action=action.php method=Post>
Deli : <input type=text size=20 name=deli><br>
Yorum : <textarea name=yorum cols=20 rows=3></textarea>
<input type=submit value=\"Gönder\">
</form>
";
}
?>

But when I add this on the top of the page the page is reloaded for each time.

<?

//this damned thing caused all the trouble...
session_start();

if (1)
{
echo "Something";

echo "<form action=action.php method=Post>
Deli : <input type=text size=20 name=deli><br>
Yorum : <textarea name=yorum cols=20 rows=3></textarea>
<input type=submit value=\"submit\">
</form>
";
}
?>

Anyway using cookies doesn't cause any reloads. I think I 'd better use cookies instead of session functions.
And now I realize why there is no session function used in phpNuke and other good scripts.
Anyway, what do you think ? Do you aggree with me ?