[Resolved] trouble with using "header"

steve_m2

I am having problems with trying to get a javascript alert message to show up when I use header. here is the code.

<?php
if($count < 180)
{
if ($serial_number != "UNKNOWN")
{
$message2 = "<script language= Javascript>;
alert('WARNING!\n\nThis unit was in for repair $count days ago\nLast time in was on $ship.\n\nPrevious RMA# - $rma');
</script>";
Header("Location: rma_getcusid.php");
exit;
}
}
?>
Then on the page where the header is going to I have:

<?php
if (isset($message2))
echo "$message2";

?>
If I use the include statement it works fine, but I can't use that because I run into resubmitting the same form when someone refreshes the screen.

Can anybody give me some suggestions on why this isn't working and maybe some solutions on how I can fix this?

rachel2004

You cannot have your JS message BEFORE the header() call. If you choose to do it like that, though, you should use output buffering with ob_start() and ob_end_clean() or one of the similar functions to dump the output buffer.

http://us3.php.net/manual/en/function.ob-start.php

steve_m2

I will have to check into that. Those things are new to me.

Thanks

steve_m2

can you pass varibles before a header call?

rachel2004

The following would be legal:

<?php
$var = "hello";
header("Location: somewhere.html");
?>

But the following is not:

<?php
$var = "hello";
echo = $var." , steve m";
header("Location: somewhere.html");
?>

I hope that explained it clearly. No messages can be sent to the browser before your header call. You could do example 2 if you used output buffering, however:

<?php
ob_start();
$var = "hello";
echo = $var." , steve m";
header("Location: somewhere.html");
?>

However, the echo statement in example 3 still wouldn't show because the echo statement would be suppressed until the end of the script, but you would have been redirected to somewhere.html before that happened anyway.

steve_m2

That makes sense. Thank you for your help

rachel2004

You bet.