[RESOLVED] A great mystery.

Shawazi

A while ago I posted, saying my forms would hang up on a Mac only. I thought it was only with a form that has a file upload. I have since then discovered that it is just the function header. Here is the redirect line after checking that a person is in the checkout without https://

header("Location: https://www.mysite.com/checkout") or die("Unable to redirect");

It's like magic that if I remove the "or die..." Macs will hang up trying to redirect. However, with this line, it does not die out as you would expect given the earlier hang.

laserlight

Well, [man]header/man returns void, so what I guess is happening here is that the return value of header() is being treated as a false value, and thus the die() is always executed.

In fact, if you read the PHP Manual carefully, you would have seen that this is the recommended practice:

header("Location: https://www.mysite.com/checkout");
exit;

[man]exit[/man] is equivalent to [man]die[/man].

Shawazi

So essentially every header should have an "or die();" or "exit;" after it. Correct? Never noticed this problem until I switched to this office with a Mac right behind me.

laserlight

So essentially every header should have an "or die();" or "exit;" after it. Correct?

Of course not. The use of an exit/die immediately after the header() call applies to the location header only.

Shawazi

I don't know why I'm not grasping this one. If I do the recommended practice of exit; right after the header, why is that so different than using the or die? I know the or die is solving the problem all together as well.

laserlight

If I do the recommended practice of exit; right after the header, why is that so different than using the or die?

The language constructs exit and die are equivalent: the recommended practice of using exit is the recommended practice of using die. But the point here is that you do not need the OR, since you have to have the exit/die anyway, and header() is not supposed to have a return value in the first place.

Shawazi

Okay that clears it up. Thanks. 🙂