Weird behavior in IE/Firefox regarding $_SERVER['QUERY_STRING'] - php

Question

In an php-based application I've been coding, I have the following small block of code:
if (isset($_SERVER['QUERY_STRING'])) {
header("Location: " . $_SERVER['QUERY_STRING']);
}
In my application, I use framesets and frames. This code is present in the main content area frame, and upon execution in IE, creates an infinite loop which kills the browser unless I manually stop loading.
The purpose of this code is to detect if there is a query string appended to the url, and if so, redirect to that query string. I've primarily been developing using chrome and and firefox, and today decided to test it in IE9. I have not tested it in any previous versions, but so far this behavior only occurs in IE, and I'm frankly stumped on why such is happening. I've searched for similar questions here and on the internet, but so far no dice.
Edit
As I noted with an earlier edit, I am using framesets and frames to control the interface. The left-hand frame, a side bar, contains links with a base target of the main 'content' area frame. The content of the content area frame contains javascript that appends a query string to the parent window's url, so that when the index page is visited(with the query string present), it will redirect the content frame to that specific page.
This works perfectly fine in Chrome. Not IE(or firefox, which I just discovered as of this edit). Ie instead redirects to the index page, the page containing the frameset, and it does this forever, creating sidebar after sidebar.

Answer 1

Try the following:
session_start();
if ( !isset($_SESSION['Redirect'] ) && isset( $_SERVER['QUERY_STRING'] ) ) {
$_SESSION['Redirect'] = true;
header( "Location: " . $_SERVER['QUERY_STRING'] );
}

Answer 2

I don't know if this can be your problem at all, but as per HTTP/1.1, redirection requires the full absolute path including the hostname. So perhaps try this:
<?php
/* Redirect to a different page in the current directory that was requested */
$host = $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'];
$uri = rtrim(dirname($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']), '/\\');
$extra = $_SERVER['QUERY_STRING'];
header("Location: http://$host$uri/$extra");
exit;
?>
Or another suggestion is to avoid using the full querystring (like ?thispage.php), but to use a GET parameter instead (like ?path=thispage.php).
<?php
/* Redirect to a different page in the current directory that was requested */
$host = $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'];
$uri = rtrim(dirname($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']), '/\\');
$extra = $_GET['page'];
header("Location: http://$host$uri/$extra");
exit;
?>

Answer 3

I kind of hate myself for not thinking of this sooner, given how horribly simple it is. All I did, was check if $_SERVER['QUERY_STRING'] was empty, as so:
if (isset($_SERVER['QUERY_STRING']) && $_SERVER['QUERY_STRING'] != '') {
header("Location: " . $_SERVER['QUERY_STRING']);
}
And that solved the problem of the index page creating infinite nested framesets and frames.