PHP Page refresh error (with form)

kuleraen

I'm a green newbie having a problem with a PHP page I've made. The page is a login form that, if the user enters in correct password, will display a little confirmation message...for now. Later it will redirect the user to a different page.

Anyways, the problem I'm having is that when I press the "Refresh" button on this page, I'm always prompted with a message "The page cannot be refreshed without resending the information. Click Retry to send the information again, or click Cancel to return to the page you were trying to view". I'd really like it if there was some way to have the browser automatically know that I want to resend the page, so to the user it would like an ordinary page. Instead of being prompted to resend the page, I'd like for the browser to do that automatically.

Any help would be greatly appreciated...I'm a firm believer in the PHP support community!

You can see this page in action at: http://prezign.com/bob/
The code is at: http://prezign.com/bob/code/

Thanks in advance for your help!

~Nathan

bad_goose

Short answer: Use the GET method rather than the POST method in your form, and then change your script accordingly (i.e. change $POST to $GET). That will get rid of the prompt.

Here's the difference between GET and POST:

POST:
The post method is typically meant for things which have permanent effects other than the script's html output, such as message board posts or sending email. The browser asks you before resending POST data to prevent people from accidentally incurring these effects more than once.

GET:
The get method is intended for things that do not cause any change on the server, such as database queries or dynamic pages. Therefore, the browser doesn't prompt before resending a GET request. The browser sends GET data simply by adding it to the requested URI.

kuleraen

bad_goose, thanks for the reply. However, I stayed away from the GET method because I didn't want to broadcast the password thru the url.

Also, I've noticed that the search page on this Forum, http://www.phpbuilder.com/board/search.php, uses the POST method for their search form, and they don't get the same error I get, so I know it can be done. Any idea how to not get the 'resend' error AND use POST method? Any help is greatly appreciated!

~Nathan