At 1/15/2007 01:52 PM, Otto Wyss wrote:
When values are entered on one of my page I submit the result back
to the same page (form action=same_page). Unfortunately each submit
adds an entry into the history, so history back doesn't work in a
single step. Yet if the count of submits were known I could use
goto(n). What's the best way to get this count? PHP or Javascript?
What you're suggesting doesn't sound easy.
If you're going to programmatically take the user to a previous page,
say for example if they click a form button within your page, then
using JavaScript you could simply walk backward through the
window.history() array until you came to an URL that doesn't match
with the current page. Of course such a solution would break if
JavaScript were disabled so you'd need to build a redundant system
server-side to make sure your site didn't break.
Only JavaScript is aware of the window.history() array, but I don't
believe JavaScript can detect when the back button is activated. You
can test for window.onunload, but that doesn't tell you which
"direction" the user is headed -- forward, backward, sideways, or
same page reload.
In a cacheing system the browser might not even make a server hit
when going back. If you can take your computer off-line and still
walk backward in browser history, your problem complicates.
Of course PHP isn't naturally aware of browser history but you could
store in the session or cookie the name of the last page in the
current session that wasn't the current page. You'd also need to set
flags in each iteration of a page so that PHP could determine whether
the page being requested had already been downloaded.
What happens when the user simply wants to reload the current
page? It sounds messy. Perhaps, rather than interfering with the
normal functioning of the browser, you could simply let it do its
thing and take steps server-side to prevent the user from
re-submitting the current form or whatever your goal is.
Good luck,
Paul
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