best practice to post data on codeigniter controller with same url? - php

Question

hello i have two route in codeigniter:
$route['register'] = 'Login/Register';
$route['login'] = 'Login/index';
for displaying login/register form
and form post routes:
$route['loginprocess'] = 'Login/LoginProcess';
$route['registerprocess'] = 'Login/RegisterProcess';
it's ok, but while using form_validation class in
$this->form_validation->set_error_delimiters('<span class="help-block">', '</span>');
$this->form_validation->set_rules('email', 'Email', 'required|valid_email');
$this->form_validation->set_rules('pwd', 'Password', 'required');
if ($this->form_validation->run() == FALSE){
$this->load->view('login');
} else {
validation success
}
problem is when i get error in form validation it goes in
http://localhost/logincode/loginprocess
is so it's not url friendly. it should post in same controller method where form already display :
http://localhost/logincode/login
so is there any way to post form in same url. with form validation error comes together

Answer 1

Posting to Same URL in CodeIgniter
You've described a common scenario. You want to load a page with a form, perform a POST request, validate the request, then show errors if there is a problem. There are some potential issues to be aware of if you're doing this:
After a successful post, what happens if the browser performs a page refresh?
After a successful post, what happens if the user navigates away to another page, but then travels backwards in history?
Both of these issues present a duplicate post issue, and that's never desirable. The way to solve this is to use a form token. A form token is generated during the loading of the page where the form is present. The value is commonly a random string of characters, and it is put in two places:
In the form as a hidden form field.
In a session or cookie.
When the form is posted, the token value in the hidden form field is passed along with the rest of the posted data. Since there is a session or cookie containing the same value, the controller/method being posted to can check if they match, and if they do then validation can be performed, and errors or success message output. In any case, a new form token is generated, so two posts will never contain the same form token.
Summary of The Basic Concept
// You of course have to start the
// session for this to work.
$this->load->library('session');
if(
isset( $_POST['token'] ) &&
isset( $_SESSION['token'] ) &&
$_POST['token'] == $_SESSION['token']
){
// Do validation ...
// ...
// If validation passes
if( $this->form_validation->run() ){
$valid = TRUE;
}
// If there were validation errors
else{
$errors = validation_errors();
}
}
if( isset( $errors ) )
{
// Display the errors
}
if( isset( $valid ) )
{
// Display a thank you message
}
// Always refresh the token
$token = substr(md5(uniqid() . microtime() . rand()), 0, 8);
$_SESSION['token'] = $token;
?>
<form method="POST">
<input type="text" name="x" />
<input type="hidden" name="token" value="<?php echo $token; ?>" />
<input type="submit" value="submit" />
</form>
In practice this concept of tokens can be much more elaborate. For instance, you may choose to encrypt the token values and then decrypt them when checking if they match. You might also create an array of tokens in your session/cookie, and check your posted token against the array of tokens. You may have other ideas on how to customize form tokens, but the basics have been presented here, and I hope it helps you achieve your goal of posting to the same URL in CodeIgniter.