Re: General use of rewrite / redirect

Aschwin Wesselius wrote: > Per Jessen wrote: >> Yes, that's a very typical setup. When the form is processed, you >> send a 303 redirect to the "Thank you" page. That way, if the user >> hits the "back" arrow, he's taken back to the form URL, not the post >> URL. (which would then warn him about re-submitting etc.) >> > Ok, fine. But why do a real redirect when a header with 303 could be > sufficient? If you model good enough, there would not be a need for > header(location) redirects. Or am I wrong? What's the difference between a "real redirect" and a header with a 303? >> I think there are plenty of perfectly valid reasons for using a >> redirect, whether dynamically from php or via an apache config. >> And undoubtedly there equally many poor reason for using redirect >> and/or rewrite. (they're very different things, by the way). > I know they're different things. I only want to start a discussion so > people do understand other techniques instead of just using whatever > 'works' as a solution to their problem with flow. Redirects do solve > some issues, but they should be avoided whenever possible. But redirect and rewrite are not solutions to the same "problem" - a rewrite is altering the URL internally, a redirect happens externally. > header(location) mechanisms do come with a very huge disadvantage if > you don't use them with caution. Requests are reinitialised, libraries > loaded (again), DB connections setup/checked again, session lookups > are being done, log write for another request etc. That's quite an > impact for just not knowing what to do with flow. I'm having difficulties following you - a plain 303 redirect to a "Thank you" page shouldn't cause all of that. It's an HTTP reply with the 303 and the new URL, followed by a single URL request from the browser. /Per Jessen, Zürich