file 1 – with the submission form
form … action=”file2.php?submit=true>
…
</form

file 2 – with the code that updates the database

…

I believe this is it. Great! I’ll try it now

In your form have it something like:

At the very top of your php page, before anything is outputted to the screen do something like:

$old_submit = $_GET['submit']; // this gets the submit variable you appended in your form
$current_url = ’samepage.php’
if ($old_submit == “true”) {
header(“Location: $current_url”);
$old_submit = “false”;
}

Let me know if you have any questions or better ways of doing it.

-Mehdi (letdev DOT com – launching december 17th, 2010)

Thanks

The problem with storing your data in the session for every post is that it’s an extra operation that has no real value and can be easily avoided. Also, when you have multiple tabs open with the same form, you may get unexpected results. Last, there may be some data that you would never for the world want to store in a session, such as a password or a credit card number, because they will be unencrypted and in a vulnerable session file (unless your sessions are in DB, but you still have the encryption issue).

Redirection after the post data has been processed is a standard approach used by many renowned PHP frameworks that I have worked with since I posted this article.

I was trying to deal with this matter but I gave up as I could not understand it properly.

The solution I have seen is related to the session. when you submit a form then you save the values in a session and then empty the values in the form so the page will not resend the values again when it is refreshed.

Now I am seeing in your blog that this solution would not be good enough.

I would appreciate if you may explain me this problem.

Thanks a lot,

Juan