Providing Feedback After a Php Header Redirect - php

Question

I have a html table in an application written with javascript (and jquery) and php. The contents of the table are stored in a MySql table.
When I want the user to add some data to the table, they click a button and a jquery ui dialog is shown, with a form for the user to fill out.
When the user fills out the form, they click save, and the form is submitted to a page of pure php, which saves the data to the table and then redirects to the original page with the table on, using
$url = BASE_URL . '/admin/pages/finance/pricing/pricing_schedule.php';
header('Location: '.$url); //Redirect to the right page
exit();
I am doing this because I don't want the message:
Confirm Form Resubmission - The page that you're looking for used information that you entered. Returning to the page might cause any action you took to be repeated. Do you want to continue?
to show should the user hit refresh for whatever reason.
However, because of the way I am doing this, I am struggling to provide a way to give feedback to the user should the save be unsuccessful.
When the user hits save in the jquery ui dialog box, the box is close when the form is submitted, so I can't provide feedback there because the error hasn't occurred yet.
When we are in the php page, as soon as we redirect back to the original page with the table on, any errors picked up are lost.
Can anyone offer any suggestions?

Answer 1

you could store any errors in the $_SESSION variable and print them out on the redirected page.

Answer 2

How about a simple GET parameter?
Something on the lines of:
header('Location: ' . $url . '?success=false&reason=blah');
And on that page at $url, you would first look for the value of $_GET['success']. If it is not "success", echo out additional HTML saying its not successful.
if ($_GET['success'] == "true") {
echo "<p>SUCCESS!</p>";
..
} else {
echo "<p>FAILED!</p>";
..
}

Answer 3

another idea is the transport of the message via the hash in the url:
if (isset($_POST['submit'])) {
...
header("Location: ".$_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"]."#".urlencode($msg));
...
}

Answer 4

Consider submitting your form through AJAX to avoid the page refresh.
Check out this tutorial: http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/javascript-ajax/submit-a-form-without-page-refresh-using-jquery/
Solution(Not Tested)
jQuery Code:
var form_data = $('#save_period_form').serialize(); alert(form_data);
$.ajax({
type: "POST",
url: "period_submit.php",
data: form_data,
dataType: 'html',
success: function(returninfo) {
if(returninfo=='1'){
alert('finish');
//will redirect to pricing schedule page after the user has pressed 'ok' on the alert popup.
window.location.assign('/admin/pages/finance/pricing/pricing_schedule.php');
} else {
alert('error occured');
}
}
});
PHP Code:
//Commented header redirection code because it's being done in the javascript code now.
//$url = BASE_URL . '/admin/pages/finance/pricing/pricing_schedule.php';
//header('Location: '.$url); //Redirect to the right page
//Assuming your save has been successful, we echo value '1'. Else echo something else..
echo '1';
exit();