Refreshing a web page inserts data again to DB

Question

I've a php web page with a form. After filling the form in web page, I can submit it to the server. But after that, if I refresh the page, it inserts the same record to the database. Is there any solutions to this problem?

Answer 1

Use the POST/Redirect/GET pattern. This will prevent the user from being able to resubmit the same form.

Answer 2

There are a number of ways, for example:

• Create a token which you insert into the form (hidden field). if the same token is submitted twice, discard the second submit.
• Check in the database if an identical post already exists.
• Save the form submit in a session variable.
• Redirect the user to a second page after the submit, using the Post/Redirect/Get pattern (preferably in combination with one of the above).

Answer 3

Yep, do two queries. The first checks to make sure the data doesn't already exist in the DB, the second one does the insert if there is no duplicate data. There are a bunch of ways to go about checking to make sure the duplicate data doesn't exist, but this is the basic process you will want to go through.