Page Not Found after using browser back button

new7media

I have put together a small PHP application where users can add/edit/remove apartment listings to our database as well as search on those listings. The problem: when looking at a search result list in this application if you click your browser back button you get a page-not-found error. Hitting refresh at this point redisplays the search result list. I was searching on phpbuilder.com for answers to why this happens when the very same thing just happened to me here -- I clicked into a post and then used my browser back button to return to the result list only to get a page-not-found error.

I'm using IE6, and I've been told this happens IE5. Same goes for Mac/Safari. I haven't tested in other browsers. I've been noticing more that this happens when I'm in PHP sites and I'm wondering if there is an explanation for it as well as if there's a fix that I can try out?

Any insight or help is appreciated!

chads2k2

If you are using POST instead of GET to pass things I can see where this might cause a problem. Because if the page is sent using POST then they will need to "repost" the data. Now, if you use GET in this situation then you will be able to just hit the back button and be fine. That is in my experience and it might not work like that for all, it does for me. Just doing some CYA.

Chad

new7media

Thanks for responding. Are you saying that I need to change the way I've set up the search form that creates the search result list? We are using a number of pulldown menus and checkboxes and text input to allow people to specify a search. I'm not sure how I would do a search on a MySQL dbase using GET. Any help - greatly appreciated.

I'm also wondering if this is something that can be managed through caching? (Though I don't really know what that means or entails?)

chads2k2

Well, I would try to use GET to see if that solves what you are looking for. That is where our company found to do things. Try that and see if it works. Another thing if your using IE then disable Chaching. That way when you refresh the page it loads a new one everytime. It used to be a big problem, I don't know if Microsoft fixed it yet.

Sorry can't give you a definite answer.

Chad

new7media

Thanks for the help. I will try your solution. I also found the following info on the phpfreaks.com website. Haven't tried this solution yet, but seems like it gets at what we're dealing with:

From the PHPFreaks Tutorial
"PHP Sessions IntroductionMicrosoft Internet Explorer Sessions Fix"
http://www.phpfreaks.com/print.php?cmd=tutorial&tut_id=41

"... There's a problem with IE6 that when you are using sessions and you post to a form, when you click your back button to make changes in the form, you have to click the REFRESH button on that page to get the information that you posted back into the form. This only works about 50% of the time, the other 50% the users information is lost and they have to type it over again....So, here's a solution for that. Enter this right below the session_start() of each script (yes it still must be before anything is output to the browser).

header("Cache-control: private");