Page URL keep anchor after header redirect

[soycharliente]

I have a page that contains both a login and registration form. I set the actions on the forms to be index.php#login and index.php#register so that if the form failed, the user would be taken down the form they were just working with.

 

The problem I am running into is that a successful form completion either logs the user in or brings them to a screen letting them know that they need to verify their email and the #login or #register anchor is being included in the next page's URL.

 

So a user visits my /login.php page, successfully logs in to the site, and sees the next page of /page.php#login instead of just /page.php

 

I read though the manual for header() but didn't really see anything relevant to anchors being preserved or how to flush URL information. Is this information being stored somewhere by the browser and I can just purge it from memory?

 

I was able to find this thread on StackOverflow, but my issue here is that I'm not listing the anchor (fragment as they call it) in the redirect. So according to one of the answers, it should get discarded.

 

I've tried structuring the redirect in two different ways to see if anything can be done as well:

header('Location: http://example.com/page.php');
header('Location: /page.php');

 

Any ideas here? Thanks.

[Muddy_Funster]

and the code is......?

[soycharliente]

Not sure what you're looking for.

Edited January 21, 2013 by charlieholder

[soycharliente]

<?php
if ( isset($_POST['login']) && $_POST['login'] == "submit" )
{
// do database stuff
header('Location: /page.php');
exit();
}
if ( isset($_POST['register']) && $_POST['register'] == "submit" )
{
// do database stuff
header('Location: /index.php?status=verify');
exit();
}
?>
<form id="login" action="index.php#login" method="post">
<!-- the form -->
<button type="submit" name="login" value="submit">Login</button>
</form>
<form id="register" action="index.php#register" method="post">
<!-- the form -->
<button type="submit" name="register" value="submit">Register</button>
</form>

[Christian F.]

Just add the identifier (what you call anchor) to the redirect manually, no need to make it more complex than that.

Edited January 21, 2013 by Christian F.

[soycharliente]

The problem I am running into is that a successful form completion either logs the user in or brings them to a screen letting them know that they need to verify their email and the #login or #register anchor is being included in the next page's URL.

 

So a user visits my /login.php page, successfully logs in to the site, and sees the next page of /page.php#login instead of just /page.php

 

Sorry if it wasn't clear. I actually don't want them. They are being preserved and I do not want them to be preserved.

[Christian F.]

Then remove them from the action attribute of the form tags..?

Edited January 21, 2013 by Christian F.

[soycharliente]

I set the actions on the forms to be index.php#login and index.php#register so that if the form failed, the user would be taken down the form they were just working with.

 

Ideally I wouldn't want to do that. Unless you know of another way to jump them back down to their form.

Edited January 21, 2013 by charlieholder

[Christian F.]

Hmmm... Upon re-reading your thread, I think I understand what your problem is. Though, that said I don't see why it's happening. Will need to do some testing.

 

Added:

After some testing it seems as if the browser keeps the identifier and then automatically adds it to the URL, if redirected to the same resource. The way to defeat this is by adding an empty identifier to the redirected URI.

In other words: Add a single # to the end of the URIs in your header () calls, and this problem will go away.

Edited January 21, 2013 by Christian F.

[Irate]

URL rewrite solves the problem.