Initiate redirect 'mid page' in php? - php

Question

I am trying to redirect a user to a 'success' page if the registration was successful. However, by this point, headers have already been sent so I can't just call header() directly.
What I did instead was put an included file (call it redirect.php) above the Doctype on the page:
// handle requested redirects
if (isset($_POST['redirect_to']))
{
$new_page = $_POST['redirect_to'];
header("Location: http://localhost/$new_page");
}
So if $_POST['redirect_to'] is set, then header() can redirect to that page. Now the problem with this approach is that this $_POST[''] variable is inside a function tasked with processing the user's registration, so of course, the form has already been submitted before the post variable is set, and therefore, redirect.php never gets to see the post variable.
Is there an easy way around this or am I making this harder than it needs to be?

Answer 1

Since you havent mentioned AJAX my guess is that you are just having a wrong concept of registration process.
Common registration process and structure:
<?php
if( !empty($_POST['registerme']) ){
// do the registration process and possible errors STORE IN THE VARIABLE
// lets say $errors, it could be an array of strings or anything you want
// if registration process was succesfull,
// set $reg_suc to true otherwise to false
if( $reg_suc ){
header('Location: success.php');
exit();
}
}
?>
<?php
if( !empty($errors) ){
//there were some errors
foreach( $errors as $error ) echo $error."<br>\n";
}
?>
<form action="#" method="POST">
<input type="hidden" name="registerme" value="registerme">
<input type="text" name="validateName" placeholder="name">
<?php if( !empty($errors['validateName']) ) echo "Please correct this value"; ?>
<!--
//some more input fields
-->
<input type="submit" value="Register">
</form>
EDIT: This is of course common only for very simple applications with registration/login functionality, in MVC(P) architecture and similar achitectures this is usually created by a view using template file providing HTML template and a model/controller or model/presenter (in e.g. PHP) that are handling the registration/login process and possible error log and that are outputting results, errors and other data through the view back to user...