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May 14.2008

Hey everyone,

I have a website where you can place an order to send a package to London. My pages are setup as parcels1.php, parcels2.php. etc. There are 7 steps to follow (address, package size, payment, etc) when sending a parcel. How can I prevent someone from just typing in [url]www.mysite.com/parcels3.php[/url] to skip steps? Because Step 1 creates the Session ID, I need the user to move linear from 1 through to 7.

How can I do this with PHP?

Thanks!
Karen

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PHP

3 Comments(s) ↴

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@NogDogMay 15.2008 — One way would be to have each page verify that it received a uniquely named form field from the preceding page in the $_POST data. If you are saving data in a session variable or the database as the sequence proceeds, you could also verify that certain requisite elements are there (then clear those items once the final page is successfully processed).
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@TecBratMay 15.2008 — Since you are already using sessions, make each page set a session variable. Then check for all the previous variables on each new page. (page 7 would look for the session variable for all 6 previous pages.) If it fails the test, Direct them back to page1. When I did something similar, I made hidden form fields to do the same thing. Not as secure as session vars, but it worked for that app.
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@TJ111May 15.2008 — Using POST data isn't the most secure method, as that's pretty easily bypassed. Since your already using sessions, here's how I would do it, and it would only take a minute to set up.

step1.php
[code=php]
$_SESSION['step'] = 1;
//rest of script
[/code]

Step2.php
[code=php]
if ($_SESSION['step']++ != 2) {
header('Location:step'. $_SESSION['step']-- .'.php');
}
//rinse and repeat for each step.
[/code]
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