Store refid then 301redirect to remove query string?

[jamsuet]

I'm completely stuck with this (beginner!) but have seen other sites doing it so am hoping someone out there knows how it works..

I need to capture an id within a query string and somehow store it before it gets removed from the URL.

eg.
External URL1: www.example.com/?refid=999
External URL2: www.example.com/page/content/?refid=999

So I have this in htaccess which removes the query string from both of the above (and any other) URL:

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^refid=
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /$1? [R=301,L]

The problem is I can't see how to store the 'refid' before it gets redirected. Currently I capture it in a session which is triggered once the PHP page has loaded, which won't be possible if it gets removed before the session is created, right?

Am I looking at this wrong? Any ideas how this is done?

Now I'm at the end of writing this I'm not even sure this is the right forum! Any help appreciated.

[jdMorgan]

If you want to carry any information from one HTTP request to another, you'll need to put it into a client-side cookie; A redirect terminates the current HTTP transaction and asks the client (browser) to start a new one. Because HTTP is a stateless protocol, all information about the previous HTTP request is lost unless the client provides it as a cookie or a query parameter. And since your intent is to remove the query string, that leaves only a cookie as a possible solution.

Jim

[jamsuet]

Thanks for the explanation, that makes perfect sense and I'd completely overlooked it being the only solution.