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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-24T09:39:08+00:00

I’m trying to redirect people to a PDF after they’ve submitted the form correctly,

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I’m trying to redirect people to a PDF after they’ve submitted the form correctly, before I do this I do some checking of the form fields to make they’ve been filled out correctly, now I was trying to use header() to do my re-direct, but because I’ve echoed a number of times before I get an error. Here’s my code below, what can I do?

<?php
    if(isset($_POST['submit'])) {
        if($valid_fname == "Y") {
            if($valid_sname == "Y") {
                if($valid_company == "Y") {
                    if($valid_email == "Y") {                   
                    }
                    else {
                        echo "<p class=\"secText\">Please enter a valid email address</p>\n";
                    }
                }
                else{
                    echo "<p class=\"secText\">Please enter the company you work for</p>\n";
                }
            }
            else {
                echo "<p class=\"secText\">Please enter your surname</p>\n";
            }
        }
        else {
            echo "<p class=\"secText\">Please enter your first name</p>\n";
        }
        if(($valid_fname == "Y")&&($valid_sname == "Y")&&($valid_company == "Y")&&($valid_email == "Y")) {
            echo "<p class=\"secText\">Thank you for confirming your details, you will be re-directed to \"The Personal Touch\" Whitepaper shortly.</p>\n";         
            header('Location:  http://www.sefasinnovation.co.uk/personal_touch.pdf');
            exit();
        }
    }
?>

EDIT Ok I got it to work with a bit of javascript in the end

    if(($valid_fname == "Y")&&($valid_sname == "Y")&&($valid_company == "Y")&&($valid_email == "Y")) {
        echo "<p class=\"secText\">Thank you for confirming your details, you will be re-directed to \"The Personal Touch\" Whitepaper shortly.</p>\n";
        echo "<script type=\"text/javascript\">\n";
        echo    "   <!--\n";
        echo    "       setTimeout(\"window.location = 'http://www.sefasinnovation.co.uk/personal_touch.pdf';\",5000);\n";
        echo    "//-->\n";
        echo    "</script>\n";
    }
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You could use output buffering to send content only after the headers have been sent.

    if(($valid_fname == "Y")&&($valid_sname == "Y")&&($valid_company == "Y")&&($valid_email == "Y")) {
    ob_start();
    echo "<p class=\"secText\">Thank you for confirming your details, you will be re-directed to \"The Personal Touch\" Whitepaper shortly.</p>\n";         
    header('Location:  http://www.sefasinnovation.co.uk/personal_touch.pdf');
    ob_end_flush();
    exit();
}

    However since there is practically no time to display the message before the redirection is done this approach would be useless.

    Your best approach here would probably be to redirect your page to a small HTML page which will trigger a JavaScript redirect after a certain amount of time has passed. Here is the general idea. You should sort the details out.

    PHP

    if(($valid_fname == "Y")&&($valid_sname == "Y")&&($valid_company == "Y")&&($valid_email == "Y")) {
    header('Location:  http://www.sefasinnovation.co.uk/notification.html');
    exit();

    // You could also avoid redirection to an HTML file and output the code directly
    echo <<<HTML
    <html>
        <head>
        <title>Enter desired title</title>
        <script type="text/javascript">
            setTimeout(function(){
                window.location = "http://www.sefasinnovation.co.uk/personal_touch.pdf";
            }, 5000);
        </script>
        </head>
        <body>
            <p class="secText">Thank you for confirming your details, you will be re-directed to "The Personal Touch" Whitepaper shortly.</p>
            <p>If this page isn't redirected in 5 seconds please click <a href="http://www.sefasinnovation.co.uk/personal_touch.pdf">here</a>.</p>
        </body>
    </html>
HTML;
}

    notification.html (the PHP code above could also spit this code out but only if there was not output on the page previously)

    <html>
    <head>
    <title>Enter desired title</title>
    <script type="text/javascript">
        setTimeout(function(){
            window.location = "http://www.sefasinnovation.co.uk/personal_touch.pdf";
        }, 5000);
    </script>
    </head>
    <body>
        <p class="secText">Thank you for confirming your details, you will be re-directed to "The Personal Touch" Whitepaper shortly.</p>
        <p>If this page isn't redirected in 5 seconds please click <a href="http://www.sefasinnovation.co.uk/personal_touch.pdf">here</a>.</p>
    </body>
</html>

    The additional link in notification.html should allow users to do a manual redirection in case JavaScript is disabled.

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