Remove question mark added to url using get get method

Question

I use the “get” form and method to offer users the option of returning to the unknown URL that they came to my site, according to the code below. I prefer this only to the browser buttons and it works without javascript.

The problem I am facing is that some browsers (chrome, safari, maybe others) add a question mark to the end of the URL to which they link. I do not want this for SEO reasons.

My question is:

1) Can I prevent the question mark from inside my php code? or

2) Please can someone show me how to redirect the url using htaccess, I may have urls that could end: -

.html? .htm? .php? /? 

Thanks in advance.

 <?php if (isset ($_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER']) ) { $url = htmlspecialchars($_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER']); echo '<br /><form action="' . $url . '" method="get"> <div id="submit"><input type="submit" value="Return to previous page" /></div> </form>'; } ?> 

Answer 1

? is probably added because you are making a GET request from the form.

Why not do something like:

 <input type="button" onclick='document.location.href=<?php echo json_encode($url);?>'>; 

Answer 2

use the POST method instead of GET

Answer 3

How appropriate is the form to use for this? Why not use the hyperlink and style to make it look like you want with CSS?

You can use try with a button instead of creating an input value to be passed.

 <form action="url" method="get"> <button type="submit">Return to previous page</button> </form> 

Answer 4

Instead of sending to random URLs (which is actually not a good idea), we recommend using redirects

Decision will be

 <?php if (isset ($_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER']) ) { $url = htmlspecialchars($_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'],ENT_QUOTES,'UTF-8'); echo '<br /><form action="redirect.php" method="get"> <input type="hidden" name="return" value="'.$url.'"> <div id="submit"><input type="submit" value="Return to previous page" /></div> </form>'; } ?> 

then in redirect.php

 <?php if (isset ($_GET['return'] ) { $url = $_GET['return']; header('Location: '.$url, true, 303); // or 302 for compatibility reasons echo '<a href="'.htmlspecialchars($url,ENT_QUOTES,'UTF-8').'">Continue</a>'; exit; }else{ echo 'Error, no redirect specified'; } 

you can replace action="GET" and $_GET with action="POST" and $_POST , and it will work the same.

or simply

 if (isset ($_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER']) ) { $url = htmlspecialchars($_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'],ENT_QUOTES,'UTF-8'); echo '<a href="'.$url.'">Return to previous page</a>'; } 

both will still create a new story in the browser.

Answer 5

In htaccess, you should have something like this:

 RewriteEngine on RewriteRule ^myPage-([a-zA-Z0-9_]*).html myPHPfile.php?var=$1 

In the above part, added to your htaccess, when a URL like myPage-whatever.html called, it just looks like calling myPHPfile.php?var=whatever