PHP form - Registration Successful Message on New Page

Question

I coded a registration form and after every input has been validated , it sends some data to the database and redirects to the login page.

I want to display a message on the login page tho like : Registration Successful - Login Here

if (!validated() {
    // post error messages

} else {
    echo '
       <div class="container">
        <div class="page-header">
            <h3>Registration Complete</h3>
        </div>
       </div>';

    header( 'Location: ../login.php' );
}

Login file :

Header - Navbar

<div class="container">
   <div class="page-header">
       <h3>Login To Members Corner</h3>
   </div>

   <form>
       // login form
   </form>

Footer

Solution 1

You can't redirect to a file after output has been shown. You have two alternate solutions here:

1. Refresh the page after a timeout while showing the message in the meantime, using a <meta> tag:

   <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="5; url=../login.php">
   

2. Output the message after redirection:

   <?php 
   header('Location: ../login.php?registered=true');
   

   And in login.php:

   <?php
   if (@$_GET['registered'] == 'true')
       echo 'You have registered successfully.'
   

Solution 2

You do a header("Location") to redirect the page. That is possible but than you want to add a paremeter where you can detect if the registration was successful. Something like:

header( 'Location: ../login.php?action=success' );

And than in you file do this:

if( $_GET['action'] == 'success' ) {
    echo "thanks for you registration, log in here";

}

Because if you redirect, the current request vars will not be available in the redirected page. So you need to pass them on to the next.

Comments

[John_Nil]

Thanks , between you need to put this : @$_GET['action'] , or you will keep getting an undefined error on action

[Ari]

Is isset() can replace @?

[casraf]

@ suppresses errors on the expression it is tied to, in this case @ will supress any errors that will raise from the variable not existing. So it's roughly equivalent to isset($...) && $..., fundementally different but in this case provides the same usage. Don't overdo it though, it's bad practice.

[Ari]

Is that mean it is better to use isset() than suppress the warning?

[casraf]

As long as you know when it's okay to use @ then it's not a big problem, never use it for supressing errors in functions or included pages, but if you need it specifically for things like $_GET not existing or the likes, it's okay - just use proper judgement