Redirect to another page with a message

Question

I want to redirect to a page and then display a message:

What I have is:

//succes            
$message = 'succes';
redirect_to('index.php');

On the index page I have:

if (!empty($message)) {
    echo '<p class="message"> '.$message.'</p>';
}

The redirect function is working fine:

function redirect_to( $location = NULL ) {
    if ($location != NULL) {
        header("Location: {$location}");
        exit;
    }
}

But it won't display my message. It's empty.

Answer 1

By the time the redirect happens and the PHP script depicted by $location is executed, $message variable would have been long gone.

To tackle this, you need to pass your message in your location header, using GET variable:

header("Location: $location?message=success");

And

if(!empty($_GET['message'])) {
    $message = $_GET['message'];
// rest of your code

You could also have a look into sessions

session_start();
$_SESSION['message'] = 'success';
header("Location: $location");

then in the destination script:

session_start();
if(!empty($_SESSION['message'])) {
   $message = $_SESSION['message'];
   // rest of your code