Doing a redirect in an action vs. using Scarab's nextTemplate

[Johnny Cass <jo...@epiuse.com>]

Hi,

I would like to hear the Turbine users' opinion on something before I go 
ahead and do something stupid. ;)

I had a look at the way Scarab uses the 'nextTemplate' parameter to 
determine which template to display next if an action executed 
successfully. We have been using this approach for a few months now. One 
problem is that the user can use the 'refresh' button to execute the 
action again. I know this can be detected using the 
"_session_access_counter" and we are using this on a few pages in our 
application. The second problem is that using the browser's 'back' 
button to return to the post action page will cause a post method form 
to be resubmitted (if there was one) or at least cuase the browser to 
prompt the user, informing him of this fact.

There are certain pages in our application that we want to be able to 
reload without executing the action again. We also want the user to be 
able to use the back button to return to the page without executing the 
action again or re-submitting the form. To achieve this, I constructed a 
new URL in the action class by removing the 'action' parameter and 
setting the 'template' parameter to the value of the 'nextTemplate' 
parameter, retaining the rest of the original URL:

e.g. 
http://my.application.com/action/testAction/template/templateOne/nextTemplate/templateTwo/someParameter/someValue

becomes:
http://my.application.com/template/templateTwo/someParameter/someValue

I then do a data.getResponse().sendRedirect() using the second URL at 
the very end of the action. The result is that the action is executed 
and the user is presented with a page that is 'refresh safe' and that he 
can navigate back to using the browser's back button.

I suppose the main difference between doing a redirect and using 
something like the 'nextTemplate' parameters is that user A can look at 
the post action page and decide to mail the link to user B, who can then 
use the link to open the page and see exactly the same thing as user A did.

Can anybody foresee any problems with this appoach? Is there a 
significant time delay in doing a redirect? Will Turbine's context be 
re-populated and the tools reinitialized for the redirect?

Thank you for your time.

Regards.
- Johnny.


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