[cobalt-users] Ammendment - CGI script writing twice

[Eric Beck <admin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ammendment:

Actually, wrong...this happens only when server authentication is employed
(we have the site blocked right now during development so an .htaccess file
was in place.  This causes the first pass at the script, after
authenticating, to write twice, Seems there is some interaction with the
authentication and netscape...weird.  at least that's what it seems like so
far... more testing to determine the exact bug...

Eric
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Actually, this was something I discovered regarding resubmitting
information through a formmail script.  I'm sure others can reproduce it.
It only occurs when using the "redirect" option in FormMail.

It only happens with Netscape, not IE.

For testing purposes, a lot of times, I'll make a testing form.html for
submitting data and then watching the results, etc., and most times, I go
back using the back button, leave the same data in there, and hit the
submit button again, or on the redirect page, just hit reload, and click
yes to the "do you want to resubmit form data" question. -- then check the
results again...all the time making changes to the script in between.

Well, it's been a while since I did this with a hacked up version of
FormMail, doing various different things, but I did recently, and got this
error, which perhaps was always there, and I had never noticed before, or
simply hadn't run across the right circumstances to produce it.

If you use the back button, hit submit without changing any of the entered
data on the script, the script will actually run two instances of
itself...don't ask me why, and only with netscape and only with the
redirect option on...  the redirect option, with FormMail, as many will
recall, or know, does a print "Location....."; at the end of that section,
instead of moving to the section that produces an html output from the
script and directed to the browser.  IF you change just one thing on the
previously submitted data, it will not do this.  If you do not have the
redirect hidden tag employed, it will not do this.  This leads me to
believe that it is some sort of interaction between netscape (v. 4.7) and
the Location header.  Since it doesn't do this with IE, I consider this to
be a Netscape bug.

At first I had thought it was something to do with the cobalt server setup,
because it was weird (primary criteria for suspecting the cobalt :-)).  I
hadn't realized that it had something to do with the data not being
changed, that was previously submitted, and I hadn't realized at the time
of writing that it only did it with Netscape, and not IE.

Thanks to Avi Brender (thescripter@xxxxxxx) who helped me get to the bottom
of it by actually eliminating the possibility of it having anything to do
with the Rewrite statements for the domain. Avi also taught me something
about the operation of the Rewrite sections as well, at the same time :-)

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If someone wants to verify this (because they're bored and have nothing
else to do??) then set up FormMail to write data to a file, just before the
print "Location.... "; statement in the if ($Config{'redirect'}) section,
of course with the redirect option using the hidden redirect tag, and
resubmit data in the method I've outlined from an html form, without
changing the data.  I'd love to have someone validate this, and then submit
the results in total to Netscape to fix the bug.  It really shouldn't do
this, and it'd be nice to be able to mess with altering scripts and testing
in this mode, without having to change something on the submitted data all
the time.  If no one validates this, then I could be wrong :-) :-)

Regards,