(PHP) Is handling a form submission on the same page more/less/equally good as handling on a separate page?

Question

I have a PHP form, and I\'m wondering how I should handle submission. I remember when learning Rails that the behavior was to have a special handler page for a form, which t

Answer 1

There's a third way to go about this that I am particularly fond of. In an effort to separate logic from presentation, I like to include a PHP file with every HTML document that requires processing of some kind (such as displaying dynamic data, handling HTTP POST requests etc.). I generally store this file in a separate directory and name it "filename.page.php". Needless to say, this is nothing more than a coding convention and you may want to call it something else.

In a sense, this means you're handling the HTTP POST request in the same file (at least as far as your web server is concerned). You can redirect clients anyway, though, by using the HTTP Location header like so:

header("Location: file.php")

As a side note, I wouldn't depend upon HTTP POST for security; it is no harder to make arbitrary HTTP POST requests than HTTP GET requests.