How to display results so back button does not ask to reload POST variables

Question

I have a form that uses XML to get results. From those results users can click to a detail page. My problem is when a user clicks back to the results page, they are asked if they want to submit the form again. How do I create this so back button just displays the results, like on aa.com, ebay, autotrader, etc.

Thanks!

Dupe: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/660329/prevent-back-button-from-showing-post-confirmation-alert — gnarf, Dec 09 '10 at 17:37
The actual solution: The ["Post/Redirect/Get Pattern"](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post/Redirect/Get) - If you `header('Location: /someotherpage.php");` in response to the post - it will not ask the user to resubmit post data. — gnarf, Dec 09 '10 at 17:39

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 09 '10 at 17:35

1

When you submit your page move the $_POST variables into the $_SESSION array and then header redirect the user to the results page.

answered Dec 09 '10 at 17:35

Paul Norman

1,621
1
9
20

Don't use SESSION. This risks race conditions. – Quentin Dec 10 '10 at 07:55
That is only when using AJAX - i.e. in a pseudo multi threaded environment. It's totally safe otherwise. – Paul Norman Dec 10 '10 at 13:11

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 10 '10 at 04:34

1

You should redirect to another page to using redirect() method of codeigniter. This will prevent the browser asking a confirmation on form submission.

answered Dec 10 '10 at 04:34

Teej

12,764
9
72
93

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:47

Is it just a search page that displays results? Why not use GET rather than POST in your form? Looking at search engines out there, they seem to use GET for their search interface. I can think of a few reasons to use GET rather than POST.

If the operation simply fetches results, semantically, the GET method is more appropriate. GET is used when you are fetching data. POST is more used when you are submitting a change to the application.
If you use GET, clicking on the back button won't give you a dialog asking whether you wish to resubmit the form.
Your users will have a URL directly to a search results page for a particular query that they can share.

Unfortunately CodeIgniter, by default, nukes the query string when processing a request. You can enable the query string in CodeIgniter by following this answer.

How to display results so back button does not ask to reload POST variables

3 Answers3