Form that makes browser redirect when accessed by either a regular form submit or an Ajax request - is this possible?

Question

I have a web page with a form. When the user submits the form, I want the server to make the browser redirect to a different page from the form action. Right now, I am doing

Answer 1

If the user is getting redirected regardless, why the Ajax? The whole point of Ajax like this is to make changes to the page without a page refresh, so the technique you're using seems a little like building a printer that outputs into a shredder hopper.

Answer 2

I'd like to know more about your use-case for this. From what I understand your trying to get your application to load a page based on the 'Location' header of an Ajax call within it? I'd ask why?

An HTTP header doesn't seem to be the right place to get that information from. Isn't your application essentially making a query that says "Where shall I redirect to?". There's no reason the Ajax response actually has to respond with a 302 and a 'Location' header. Why not just have it respond with JSON or XML which contains the new URL?

Edit: Just re-read your penultimate paragraph. I'm not sure there's a good way of achieving what you want. The concept sounds broken to me. :)