Cannot add header information - headers already sent :: redirect problem

spstieng

I have a an online email form which calls mail.php.
In the mail.php I check for various variables and send the email using the mail() function.

Now, sending the mail works fine. The problem is that the users get a blank page.

So I chucked in a "thank you" note, and telling them that they will be redirected to the main page.

I use header('location:index.php') to redirect users.

The problem is that I cannot have any output before the header, but I want the users to know that the mail have been sent successfully.

How can I work around this?

Here's the code (that does not work because of the txt output).

	mail("my_MailAdd","subj_txt",$msg, "from: $from <mail_add>");

echo "Thank you";
sleep(4);
header('location:index.php');

planetsim

You cannot have any output before any headers.
Thats HTML and PHP errors.
Try using a meta refresh

olly2111

or just place
ob_start() at the very top of ur page, after the session_start() function if u use functions.
This will remove the error.

spstieng

I played around with ob_start() (it's what I'm using now), but that didn't solve my problem....

I don't use sessions.

How can I show some infomration before header('location:index.php'); is called?

I though about going around the problem by creating another PHP document (e.g. redirect.php) and call the header function there. Because then I would be loading a new page and no data is output before the header.

The problem is that I couldn't use include - that just includes the file and previous output will still create an error.

Snipps fro my code:

ob_start();

echo "thank you";
sleep(4);
header('location: main.php?page=contact%20us');
ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();

This just waits 4 seconds and no output text. Just redirect.
Should this work??

Does anyone have an example where a user, after submiting information from a form, gets feedback then is redirected to another page?

All help appreciated :-) Thanks.

laserlight

that simply wont work.
avoid using output buffering.

rather, re-design without the header().

You can always have your "thank you" message and a link to " main.php?page=contact%20us"

If you really want to re-direct, then in your thank you page write a meta refresh tag in the <head></head> part before writing the thank you message.

spstieng

Oh darn. Thanks Laserlight.

How dose this page work?
Because when I press the 'submit reply' button here, I get a window displaying some info, before another page (my thread) is displayed.

The same goes for the search function.
I get a message saying: I'm searching (or something like that).

Cheers!

jernhenrik

to redirect they use the meta tage refresh:

above stolen from their source code.