Redirect to new page w/ POST data (PHP/Zend)

Question

I'm trying to figure out how to redirect to a new page (different application, controller, action) and maintain the current POST data.

My app is validating the POST data and if a certain criteria is met, I want to redirect to a different location, but make sure the POST data is passed as POST data to that new page. Here's a rough example:

POST /app1/example HTTP/1.1
Host: example.com
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Content-Length: 17
    var1=foo&var2=bar

In my exampleAction (Zend_Controller_Action), I check to see if var1 == foo, and if it does I want to redirect (302) to /app2/example with that same POST data. Something maybe like this?

HTTP/1.x 302 Found
Location: /app2/example
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Content-Length: 17
    var1=foo&var2=bar

I can see how to create a new HTTP request using Zend_Http_Client, but I'm not looking to simply request the page and display the content. Should I still be looking to use Zend_Http_Client anyway? At the moment I'm playing with stuff like this:

$this->getResponse()->setRedirect('/app2/example/', 302);
$this->getResponse()->setBody(http_build_query($this->_request->getPost()));

I'm sure what I want to do is possible through some means of trickery and demon-cavorting, but it's definitely alluding me. Any help is appreciated.

- rk

Answer 1

Rather than redirecting the browser to the new location, why not just forward the request from the controller to the other controller?

return $this->_forward("action", "controller", "module");

Answer 2

IMO you can't do a Redirect with POST. See http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html#sec10.3

As already said you could save your POST-Data in the Session.

Answer 3

You can use a Controller _request object

$this->_request->setPost(array(
    'someKey' => 'someValue'
));

And then simply use _forward protected method

$this->_forward('yourAction', 'yourController', 'yourModule');

Then, in forwarded controller action just call

$aPost = $this->_request->getPost();

Answer 4

You can use the redirector action helper:

http://framework.zend.com/manual/1.12/en/zend.controller.actionhelpers.html#zend.controller.actionhelpers.redirector

This is working for me. It is passing the login credentials from one login screen to another. The 307 may cause the browser to alert the user that the redirect is occurring, a 303 will redirect and populate the credentials on the next page, but not submit the second form.

$baseUrl = 'https://example.com';
$this->_redirector = $this->_helper->getHelper('Redirector');
$this->_redirector->setCode(307)
   ->setUseAbsoluteUri(true)
   ->gotoUrl($baseUrl . '/home/login',
        array('username' => $authForm->getValue('username'),
              'password' => $authForm->getValue('password')
        )
   );

Answer 5

Because the client handles the redirection after the server's response I don't think you can do much about this. Firefox for example asks the user whether he/she wants to resend the POST data to the new location or not.

A nasty solution would be to fill and return a HTML form and auto-submit it with JavaScript. :/

Answer 6

I'm not too familiar with Zend specifically, but there are two approaches I'd take to your problem:

1. Store the POST data in the session for the life of that request/redirect
2. Set the redirect to be a POST, and encode the data. Instead of using redirect, just send a new header with POST instead of GET.