resubmission on refresh

Resubmission on Refresh

If you have ever come across a situation where you hit the refresh button and suddenly a pop-up appears asking "Do you want to resubmit the form?" then you might have wondered why this happens. This issue occurs mainly on web pages where forms are submitted via POST method. When a user submits a form via POST, the data is sent to the server and the server processes and responds to the request. If the user refreshes the page after submitting the form, the browser tries to resend the data to the server. This creates a problem for the server because it has already processed the request and might cause duplicate entries or other issues.

Why does it happen?

The browser caches web pages to improve performance, so when a user refreshes a page, the browser tries to load the cached version of the page first. If the original page had a form submitted via POST method, then the browser tries to resend the data to the server. This causes the resubmission warning message to appear.

How to fix it?

There are several ways to fix this issue:

• Redirect after form submission: Instead of just displaying a success message on the same page, redirect the user to a new page after form submission. This way, if they refresh the page, they will only refresh the success page and not resend the form data.
• Use GET instead of POST: If possible, use GET instead of POST method for form submission. GET requests are idempotent, meaning they can be repeated any number of times without causing any harm.
• Use AJAX: AJAX allows you to submit form data without refreshing the page. This way, even if the user refreshes the page, the form data will not be resubmitted.

if(isset($_POST['submit'])) {
  // process form data
  // redirect to success page
  header("Location: success.php");
  exit();
}

In the above example, we are redirecting to a success page after form submission. This way, if the user refreshes the page, they will only refresh the success page and not resend the form data.

Overall, it is important to handle form submissions properly to avoid any issues related to resubmission on refresh. Choose the solution that works best for your specific situation and implement it accordingly.