Form Strategy for Beginner

[sois]

What is the best way to set up a form? Should the submitted info always be redirected to a new page? I found a way to submit form data to the same page using $PHP_SELF. I really like the method but problems always happen when users press refresh or back button. What is the correct method to avoid back/refresh issue? How can I kill the $_POST data?

[bradgrafelman]

sios wrote:

What is the correct method to avoid back/refresh issue? How can I kill the $_POST data?

Start a session and store some arbitrary key/value when they first view the form. Once it's submitted, remove that value. That way, before you process the submitted data, you can check for that session value. If it doesn't exist, they either never viewed the form in the first place (e.g. directly posting data to your script) or else they've already submitted data once.

[kkobashi]

There are many ways to handle form processing in PHP. But one I like is the ability to use heredoc syntax along with keeping the PHP code and HTML markup in a single file. It makes things more easier to manage and to read. Presentation/markup purists will hate it but it is a quick and dirty way to get something done with just a few simple tricks.

Simple form processing in php