preserving form fields across pages

[jleeman]

In a session, I'm looking for a way to preserve form variables when using the 'Back' and 'Forward' buttons:

I have three pages: A, B, and C. Each page has a form. Page A's submit button goes to Page B. Page B's submit button goes to Page C. Ideally, when a user fills out Page A, submits it, fills out Page B, and submits it, we'd like to have all these form variables saved so that clicking any combination of the 'Back' and 'Forward' buttons will not "lose" the data on the forms in Pages A and B.

Here's what I can accomplish so far:

1. Fill out the form on Page A and submit.
2. That brings us to Page B. Fill out the form on Page B and submit.
3. That brings us to Page C. Click the 'Back' button, bringing us back to Page B. At this point, Page B's form fields are all filled in properly.
4. Click the 'Back' button again, bringing us back to Page A. At this point, Page A's form fields are all filled in properly.
5. Now I'd like to be able to submit or click the 'Forward' button and have all of Page B's form fields filled in, but I can't seem to do that.

If anyone has a slick way to do this, please let me know. And if you have sample code that does it, I'd be very interested to see it. Thanks!

[Kudose]

http://us3.php.net/manual/en/function.session-cache-limiter.php

<?php
// Date in the past
header("Expires: Mon, 26 Jul 1997 05:00:00 GMT");

// always modified
header("Last-Modified: " . gmdate("D, d M Y H:i:s") . " GMT");

// HTTP/1.1
header("Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate");
header("Cache-Control: post-check=0, pre-check=0", false);

// HTTP/1.0
header("Pragma: no-cache");
?> 

from

http://us3.php.net/header

[Sxooter]

Wait, do you mean your own programmatically executed forward / back, more commonly known as next previous buttons, or the forward and back buttons on the browser?

The behaviour of those buttons on the browser is much more difficult to implement and prone to quirks of specific clients than is programming your own next / previous buttons...

[jleeman]

I was referring to the browser's 'Back' and 'Forward' buttons, but if you know a way creating your own 'Back' and 'Forward' form buttons, I'd be interested to know! Thanks.

-Jeff

[Sxooter]

The problem with the browser's back and forward buttons is that they move through history, so to speak. I.e. when you hit back, generally no message is sent back to your apache/php server to tell it someone hit the back button.

Now, there may be things in some browsers that let you detect / capture the back button, but it's not guaranteed to work.