Redirection

SSeeley

Hello, I am hoping someone can help me.

I have a form which posts data into a mySQL database, which works fine. After submission I then want the user to be redirected to a new webpage, this is the php code I have but the redirection does not work...can anyone help me with this problem.

<?php

mysql_connect("localhost", "mypcguy2_mypcguy", "*****") or die(mysql_error());

mysql_select_db("mypcguy2_passportforpets") or die(mysql_error());

// Form Variables
$FirstName = $GET['firstname'];
$LastName = $GET['lastname'];

// Insert a row of information into the table "contacts"
mysql_query("INSERT INTO contacts
(pkID, fname, lname) VALUES (null, '$FirstName', '$LastName' ) ")
or die(mysql_error());

header("Location: http://www.example.com/");

I look foward to hearing back from anyone who can help.

g_stanton4142

What error message do you get? Is the code you have given the ONLY contents of the page? You are not allowed to have ANYTHING before the <?php tag, not even a space or an empty line.

So to clarify the following wouldnt work

start of .php file:<html><?php header("http://burnsy.servebeer.com"); ?></html>

start of .php file: <?php header("http://burnsy.servebeer.com"); ?>

start of .php file:

<?php header("location:http://www.example.com"); ?>

This would work...

start of .php file:<?php header("location:http://burnsy.servebeer.com"); ?>

bodzan

I'm not sure what do you mean by "does not work" for what I can see the code is correct, but I would consider doing few things to try it on...

First, if a page that you would want to redirect user to is on the same site as the one that you are redirecting from I woul advise you to use relative paths i.e. if a page you are trying to redirect to two folders above the page you are redirecting from use:

header("Location:../../page.php");

Second, for I don't know what reason I have to add exit statement after header to make it work because if I don't sometimes it will not work. I.E.

header("Location:path/to/page.php");
exit();

Also, I would like to hear are you certain that the code reaches the header directive? What I mean is that it could die on either of the two places where it could (after connection to database or after INSERT statement) without you knowing it (error displaying is turned off or whatever).

At last if you are certain that the header statement is reached - what do you get as a result? A blank page or what?

At the end I will say again: your code does look O.K. to me, but I could be wrong... 😉

g_stanton4142

When I say "does not work" i mean it does not work. This is because the header function works by modifying the header information. The examples which I said would not work, cause the header information to be sent before the php is reached. They would produce a warning message similar to the following:

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at C:\Program Files\Apache Group\Apache2\htdocs\NEW SITE\tester.php:1) in C:\Program Files\Apache Group\Apache2\htdocs\NEW SITE\tester.php on line 3

suntra

bodzan wrote:
First, if a page that you would want to redirect user to is on the same site as the one that you are redirecting from I woul advise you to use relative paths i.e. if a page you are trying to redirect to two folders above the page you are redirecting from use:
header("Location:../../page.php");
😉

WRONG ! URLs in redirection should ALWAYS be full URLs...

g_stanton4142

actually you can use a statement such as:

header("location:folder/folder2/main.php");

You DONT have to supply a full URL.

suntra

http://ca.php.net/manual/en/function.header.php

« Note: HTTP/1.1 requires an absolute URI as argument to Location: including the scheme, hostname and absolute path, but some clients accept relative URIs. You can usually use $SERVER['HTTP_HOST'], $SERVER['PHP_SELF'] and dirname() to make an absolute URI from a relative one yourself »

g_stanton4142

Point taken, it depends on the webbrowser. Up to date browsers understand relative URL's in the header (although in theory this is an invalid header). So to be safe "make an absolute URI from a relative one yourself" as shown on the php manual page http://ca.php.net/manual/en/function.header.php
(which was provided by suntra)

🙂

bodzan

...I must change most of my header's in my own applications to meet this standard... 😃

Thanks suntra...

However they worked without a problem for me like that except for that little thingy I had to use exit() after header statement...

Could this be because of my usage of relative paths?

g_stanton4142

You only put exit there to prevent any code running after the header statment. Putting the exit statment there shouldnt really make a difference, the redirect should still work. Im not sure why it wouldnt without it, would be nice if anyone can shed some light on that one.

bodzan

When I have a script ending after header statement it all goes as planned but if a header statement is somewhere on top of the bigger script it tends to fail without exit() and thus I have to use it...

I think that was the situation where header would fail to rediret me but I'm not quite sure because I use exit() after every header statement to avoid this issue for some time now...