Question

I try to prevent a website of sending a form again after refreshing a website. The problem is, it should be possible, when turning back to previous side to change things and send email the email a second time.

When turning back, the form page won’t be loaded again and it is not possible to change a SESSION variable. But the user should still be able, to get his old data again and don’t has to type in everything again.

After using just the SESSION for setting variables, i used the CGI.HTTP_Referer to get the website the user came from. But when reloading the website, the referer doesn’t change. So no way to solve the problem that way.

<cfif Right("#CGI.HTTP_REFERER#", 5) EQ "myForm">
    <cfset SESSION.send = true />
<cfelse>    
    <cfset SESSION.send = false />
</cfif>

Is there a way to execute coldfusion code with javascript or any other way

---

WHAT I TRYED:

<cfif isDefined("SESSION.actualSite") EQ "false" 
AND isDefined("SESSION.actualSite") EQ "false">

        <cfset SESSION.lastSite = ArrayNew(1) />
        <cfset SESSION.actualSite = ArrayNew(1) />
        <cftrace var="SESSION.lastSite" text="lastSite1" />
        <cftrace var="SESSION.acutalSite" text="acutalSite1" />
    </cfif>

    <cfif ArrayisEmpty(SESSION.actualSite) EQ "NO">
        <cfoutput>#ArrayLen(SESSION.actualSite)#</cfoutput>
        <cfset SESSION.lastSite[1] = SESSION.actualSite[1] />
        <cfset SESSION.lastSite[2] = SESSION.actualSite[2] />

        <cfdump var="#SESSION#" label="session scope from application.cfm" /><br />

        <cfif SESSION.actualSite[1] NEQ SESSION.lastSite[1] >           
            <cfoutput>INSIDE TRUE BLOCK</cfoutput>
            <cfset SESSION.send = true />
        <cfelse>        
            <cfoutput>INSIDE FALSE BLOCK</cfoutput>
            <cfset SESSION.send = false />
        </cfif>
    </cfif> 

    <cfset SESSION.actualSite[1] = Right("#CGI.CF_TEMPLATE_PATH#", 25) />
    <cfset SESSION.actualSite[2] = Left("#Right("#CGI.HTTP_REFERER#", 25)#", 17) />

Looks to me, like the method with relocation to a blank page where you just display some output text is the easiest and best way. But I was looking for another way to solve this problem. In the previous code, I save the CGI variables, CF_TEMPLATE_PATH and HTTP_RERFERER inside arrays. On next refresh or when turning back to the form and submitting again, the array will be set again, and previous site information (from page before) will be moved to a second array. This must be executed inside the Application.cfm. I also defined the arrays in the SESSIOn scope… everything must be fine, but something doesn’t work. Maybe somebody can help me?!

Answer 1

This is how I dealt with “reload sending email again” situations on some of the sites I worked with.

After the form is submitted and the email is sent, use cflocation to redirect to a simple html/cfm file that thanks them for the input. The user can reload that page and it will just redisplay the “thank you” message.