I want to reload a page once

[paste]

Basically, I have a page that just doesn't get refreshed/reloaded when it's visited. What I want to do is have a little bit of javascript activated onLoad that refreshes the page, but only once! Any help?

-eric

[Pikin_It_Up]

I don't understand why the page has to be refreshed. If someone is visiting it, shouldn't it be ready to be viewed?

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The reason it needs to be refreshed is that it's a page that shows the contents of a shopping cart, and if the page has already been visited, it won't display changes until it's refreshed.

[Sanenet]

Try the "no-cache" META command: <meta HTTP-EQUIV="Pragma" CONTENT="no-cache">

[Added]Stick a random number on the end of the page name so it's always called afresh [/Added]

[edited by: Sanenet at 4:42 pm (utc) on April 8, 2004]

[paste]

Tried it. I've tried various meta-tags that were suggested to me, all to no avail. So I'm looking for a js solution.

How would i do the random number thing?

[Sanenet]

Several ways: setup URL parsing as directory spoofing (so that me.cfm?a=1 becomes a.cfm/a/1), with the last URL variable a random number. That should confuse the browser into downloading the page each time. (See Amazon for an example)

Or, send the user to mypage.cfm, which redirects to a non existant page which calls a custom 404 creating the information required (or creates a new page with random number and sends you there).

[paste]

Hmm... I'm not familiar with .cfm files. Also, my shopping cart is run through a perl program that parses the URL anyway, so I suppose it could take care of the random number thing. Or might there be a better way to do it with perl?

[Rambo Tribble]

Your problem possibly stems from a server configuration issue. It depends on the server software in use how to make the appropriate changes, but your server can set the refresh frequency of a file.

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considering this problem could occur on a number of other systems, i am looking for another method of refreshing the page; one that will at least work on my system, too.

[Rambo Tribble]

See if document.location.reload(true); works for your purposes. You'll probably need to implement a low-persistence cookie as a switch to prevent repetitive reload. As DrDoc suggests, a server-side approach has compelling advantages, not the least of which is improved security.

[edited by: Rambo_Tribble at 4:56 pm (utc) on April 14, 2004]

[DrDoc]

Even though meta tags and JS solutions can sometimes work, the proper way of doing what you want is to pass the appropriate server headers. Are you running on a Unix/Windows server? Is it running Apache? Do you have access to PHP/Perl/ASP?

[paste]

unix, yes, and i have access to perl; not sure about php or asp. never used them, anyway.

[DrDoc]

Then you can set the no cache headers directly in .htaccess...

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sounds good. i'm very inexperienced with .htaccess though, so could i get a bit more help on how to do it? or better yet, could you direct me to a place that could help me figure out how to do it? or better still, both?