controlling the number of times a form is submitted

kitonia

😕
Does anyone have any suggestions on how to make it so a person can not submit a form no more than 3 times before they have to log in again?

thorpe

please elaberate. what is the form for? do you mean a login form where if the user fails a login 3 times? if so, isn't making them log in again already happening.

if not... what kind of form do you mean. is it a form that submits messages to a board? you want to boot the users after 3 messages?

what?

kitonia

You brought out some really good points so thank you. This is the gist of what I am doing:

I made a form for my school's library so staff and faculty can order a book. the form gets loaded into a database so long as the required fields are filled. and the field information is valid.

This is the part I am unsure of...what should I do after the stuff has been loaded in the database, like what are my options. I was thinking of routing them to a differnet page, but I can't since the header function won't work in the area of code where I need it. So I am not sure what to do at this point.

I thought about putting a max amount of times on the form so the user won't be a jerk and keep hitting the submit button over and over and thus filling up the tables in my database.

Hope I didn't confuse you and am looking forward to your reply.

thorpe

im not sure i know what you mean by "header function won't work". you should be able to work it so you can redirect after you have processed your form.

could you post some code?

kitonia

I read that headers do not work if they come after any output to the browser.
My psuedocode is as follows:
if(isset($_POST['submit'])){
//validate fields and make sure required fields are filled out...
if(the above comment is correct){
//add the data to the database table

THIS IS WHERE I WOULD LIKE TO PUT THE HEADER FUNCTION TO RE-ROUTE THE USER BUT AM NOT ALLOWED TO BECASUE THE HEADER FUNCTION WILL ONLY WORK IF NO OUTPUT IS DISPLAYED TO THE BROWSER BEFOREHAND....and I can't change this because I have html everywhere in order to display the form to the user and this is considered output to the browser so I can't call the header function here like I want to.

} //end inner if
} //end if submit was pressed

In brevity, what can I do after I load the data, I would like to redirect the browser.

Thank you all and I welcome any suggestions

thorpe

you should be able to call the header function there because it is inside your 'if' statement which is only executed if the form is submitted. this is all done in a seperate request to the one that displays your form.

the form isn't displayed again once its submitted is it?