Printing Extracted POST data on different page

arzoo400

Has anyone encountered an issue where the data you extracted from a POST and printed on screen disappears when the user presses the ENTER button on the address bar to reload the page.

This happens to me when I have a form that sends POST data from 1 page to another page which extracts the POST and prints it out. After the 2nd page prints everything well. If the user reloads the page by pressing ENTER on the address bar's [url]http://localhost.....php[/url], the page reloads but now without the data that it extracted via POST

For example, here's the form in sender.php

<form action="test.php" method="post"> 
Name: <input type="text" name="fname" /> 
Age: <input type="text" name="age" /> 
<input type="submit" /> 
</form>

On another file, test.php, we receive and extract the POSTed data and print it.

 Welcome <?php echo $_POST["fname"]; ?>!<br /> 
You are <?php echo $_POST["age"]; ?> years old.

Test.php prints it out ok. But then, if the user decides to press ENTER on the address bar that shows something http://localhost/.... test.php, it will reload the test.php page but this time with the parts of $POSTP["fname"] and $POST["age"] blank, which will look like an error or something wrong happened, to the user.

Is there a way to prevent this from happening? or a fix for this?

NogDog

When you press enter from the address bar, the browser just submits that URL in a HTTP request -- no POST data is sent. Therefore, there is no POST data to be processed by the new request. If this is a concern, then add a check to see if $_POST is empty, and if so either slap the user upside the head or do a header() redirect back to the original form page (and then hit them upside the head).

arzoo400

Ha! NogDog, That's probably one of the top 5 answers I've ever gotten.

Just an additional question, if this is the correct response to a reload via address bar, does this mean it isn't a good practice to send POST to another page (ie. always go the php SELF route or use a GET), and how do commercial web sites avoid something like this (I don't think I've encountered something like this in the web)?

NogDog

Normally, if you are going to have a multi-page form sequence (which I think is the issue here?), then I would probably store the in-process data either in the session data or in the database, so that it can be accessed as/when needed regardless of what idiocy the user tries. So in this case, on the page in question you might first check for $POST data, and if present, use that and then copy it into $SESSION. If not, then check for the relevant items in the $_SESSION data and use it, instead. If both are empty, go back to the slap-the-user-upside-the head instructions, above.

arzoo400

Good Tips! Thanks for the help NogDog!

prensil

Helpful tips. I think this is the only we should work in such condition. We need to copy to the POST data to the session variables for further use.

Thanks & Regards,
Prensil Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
php web development company