Redirect with a 303 after POST to avoid "Webpage has expired": Will it work if there are more bytes than a GET request can handle?

Question

I want to workaround the "Webpage has expired" issue. First, I just changed a POST to a GET, but that resulted in an error that my HTTP request exceeded the maximum size for a GET.

So, now I'm thinking to try the technique described in the link below (post, 303, redirect), but will I still have the same size limitation problem?

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/420103/what-is-the-correct-response-to-an-http-post-request

I seem to be in a pick-your-poison situation.

EDIT More detail:

What I'm "POSTING" are search criteria. The server responds with the results of the search. There are a lot of controls on the form, http://ifdefined.com/btnet/search.aspx, more if the user has added custom fields, and ASP.NET's "Viewstate" adds more bytes.

Answer 1

When using the HTTP 303 response, you would normally redirect to a URL that does not contain the posted information. So you wouldn't run into the same URL size limitation problem. For example, an example might be the following:

    Client: GET /list
    Server: 200 OK
    [user clicks Delete button on item 5]
    Client: POST /delete?id=5
    Server: 303 See other (Location: /list)
    Client: GET /list
    Server: 200 OK

The browser would not show the result of the POST, but would immediately redirect to the URL listed in the Location: header.

Answer 2

1. Store POSTed data on the server
2. Redirect to /page?id=unique-id-of-the-data

Basically store them in a session. But if you use your own storage mechanism and generate new ID for every POST, it will work nicely with multiple windows open (windows share cookies, thus sessions).