Access $POST data using header re-direct?

[Oatley]

Hello, I am looking for some help with a form I am designing please.

I have a form, where a user enters their $_POST['user_id'] and their $_POST['name'].

Now whatever number they enter for their $_POST['user_id'] and hit submit on the form I use to make a URL string for examlple

search/123456/
Or
search/123473/

Which is done using a header redirect

PHP Code:

header('Location: search/'.$_POST['user_id']).'');
exit; 


However, on the page I am re-directing to I also want to be able to access
echo the $_POST['name'].

Is it possible without passing the name in the URL string, or is there a way around this?

Thank you

[sunfighter]

Not gonna work. Why don't you simple do the search on the script the form submits to?

[tangoforce]

Originally Posted by Oatley

However, on the page I am re-directing to I also want to be able to access
echo the $_POST['name'].

Is it possible without passing the name in the URL string, or is there a way

Contrary to sunfighter, yes. Sessions.

A session is basically a bit of memory you can read and write which php automatically saves and reads from a file on the servers hard disk. It is unique to each user and identified by a cookie.

At the top of your script BEFORE any output such as html or print statements AND in every script that use the $_SESSION array:
session_start();

Then after:
$_SESSION['name'] = $_POST['name'];

Likewise to access it in your next script:
session_start();
$Name = $_SESSION['name'];

I'm not sure why sunfighter thinks this isn't possible..

[sunfighter]

I didn't think it would work because header('Location: search/'.$_POST['user_id']).''); just didn't make sense to me.

[Fou-Lu]

These are both correct.
$_POST becomes unusable. You cannot post and get. You should be dealing with post at the location where you intend to post.
$_SESSION can be populated with $_POST. So you can retrieve $_SESSION['post'] for example from the page redirected to.

The final solution doesn't deal with redirection. You can connect to the page via socketing or curl and send the POST data manually.