Post data and refresh page

Question

I have an edit-form page to edit my website posts. It uses post method to the same page. If the form is compiled correctly shows up a congrats message.

The problem:

When users hit the refresh button the script tries to repost the data again to page. Is there a way to avoid this?

thanks

Luca

Answer 1

The general outline of the PRG pattern is this:

if ( $_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] == 'POST' )
{
     /// do your magic

     $_SESSION['error'] = "Thanks for your message!";

     // this should be the full URL per spec, but "/yourscript.php" will work
     $myurl = ...;

     header("Location: $myurl");
     header("HTTP/1.1 303 See Other");
     die("redirecting");
}

if ( isset($_SESSION['error']) )
{
     print "The result of your submission: ".$_SESSION['error'];
     unset($_SESSION['error']);
}

Answer 2

You need to use the PRG pattern.

Answer 3

This is called the Post/Redirect/Get pattern. You do this by responding to a POST request with a 302/303 Redirect, which prevents that troublesome behavior on the client.

You can read more about this in the link I posted above.

Answer 4

You should use the PRG pattern already mentioned above! Just for completeness I add the possibility of using javascript history.replaceState if your forms depend on js (e.g. noscript should invalidate the form or something similar...).

<script>
  window.history.replaceState({}, '#no-reload');
</script>