How to validate a form in PHP, then redirect to an external page

Question

I'm trying to validate a registration form using HTML and PHP, and insert the data into an SQL database. Upon registration, I'd like for my user to be directed to their personal dashboard. I can get everything to work except for the redirect upon form submission.

Here is the PHP at the start of the page:

<?php


// define variables and set to empty values
$emailErr = $passErr = $confirmErr = $email = $pass = $confirm = "";

if ($_SERVER["REQUEST_METHOD"] == "POST") {
  if (empty($_POST["email"])) {
    $emailErr = "Email is required";
  } else {
    $email = test_input($_POST["email"]);
  }

  if (empty($_POST["pass"])) {
    $passErr = "You must have a password";
  } else {
    $pass = test_input($_POST["pass"]);
  }

  if (empty($_POST["confirm"])) {
    $confirmErr = "You must confirm your password";
  } else {
    $confirm = test_input($_POST["confirm"]);
  }  

  if ($pass != $confirm) {
    $confirmErr = "Your passwords must match";
  } 

}

  if ($_SERVER["REQUEST_METHOD"] == "POST") {
  $email = test_input($_POST["email"]);
  $pass = test_input($_POST["pass"]);
    }

function test_input($data) {
  $data = trim($data);
  $data = stripslashes($data);
  $data = htmlspecialchars($data);
  return $data;
    }

?>

And my HTML form:

<div class="container">

    <form class="form-signin" method="post" action="<?php echo htmlspecialchars($_SERVER["PHP_SELF"]);?>"> 
      <h2 class="form-signin-heading">Register below:</h2>   
      <span class="error"><?php echo $emailErr;?></span>  
      <input type='email' class="form-control" placeholder="enter email..." name='email'/>
      <span class="error"><?php echo $passErr;?></span>
      <input type='password' class="form-control" placeholder="enter password" name='pass'/><span class="error"><?php echo $confirmErr;?></span>
      <input type='password' class="form-control" placeholder="confirm password" name='confirm'/>

      <input type='submit' class="btn btn-success btn-block" name="submit" value="submit">
      <h5>Already have an account? <a href="login.html">Log in</a>.</h5>
    </form>

  </div>

Note the use of

<?php echo htmlspecialchars($_SERVER["PHP_SELF"]);?> 

on

<form action=""> 

param. Using this function I can't get a redirect.

I've included my SQL entries following the HTML, and the entries are working just fine, but the header(); tag doesn't seem to work. See here:

<?php

$email = $_POST['email'];
$pass = md5($_POST['pass']);

// Database connection
require 'database.php';
$sql = "SELECT email FROM users WHERE email = '".$email."'";

$result = $conn->query($sql);
$row_count = $result->num_rows;

if ($row_count == 1) {
    // user already exists
    header('Location: login.php');
} elseif ($row_count > 1) {
    // just to double check multiple entries aren't input into the DB
    echo 'There are too many records with that name!';
} else {
    // enter user into DB
    $sql = "INSERT INTO users (email, pass)
    VALUES ('".$email."', '".$pass."')";

    if ($conn->query($sql) === TRUE) {
        header('Location: dashboard.php');
        exit();
    } else {
        echo "Error: " . $sql . "<br>" . $conn->error;
    }

mysqli_close($conn);
}

?>

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

Answer 1

If I understand it right, what you can do is redirect back to your page with the link :

<form name="form-lignin" method="post" action="this-php-page.php">

On the same page you can then create a section that will show up only if the form has been submitted and the form will be hidden. The section can be personalised for each user then as well.

You can do this by adding a hidden field to your form.

<input type='hidden' name='submission' value="something"/>

Then you can add this php :

            if ($_POST["submission"]=="something") {

        *Dashboard content?*    

              } else {

        *The actual form...*
              }

Hope this helped :)

Answer 2

hi i have seen you code in your code you are using login.php for redirecting from header tag. and in html file you are using login.html file for checking account is exists or not. Please check file extension for your login file. you can use following link for header function details: PHP header(Location: ...): Force URL change in address bar

Answer 3

1.you need ensure the code has run

  if ($conn->query($sql) === TRUE) { echo 'is run!';exit; header('Location: dashboard.php'); exit(); } 

and you can use if ($conn->query($sql)) instand if ($conn->query($sql) === TRUE)

2.notice ,if the "exit;" code run ,"mysqli_close($conn);" will useless。

Answer 4

You first need to put all your php code above the html so that the html output will be sent to the browser after execution of the validation script.

Then

1 Capture form values

2 Validate form values

3 If Every thing is ok. Then sanitize the input and insert it into the database.

4 if insert successful, Redirect it to another page, Using header('location: http://example.com ');

Thats it