当两个发布请求到达服务器时，处理php中的重试发布请求

Question

Users of my php application sometimes accidentially submit messages or other actions twice without wanting to. This seems to be an issue caused by (mobile) clients automatically retrying a request if the response takes too long, e.g. due to bad network connection. My server though handles both requests and processes them as seperate actions.

How can I handle such retry post requests without disabling the possiblity of sending deliberate double post requests? Therefore how can i distinguish between these retries and deliberatly user-send resends of the same request?

A bit of context, that could help understand the problem: I'm running a oldschool html-based browser game. Users may want to resend the exact same action like "attack" multiple times through page refresh delibaretly and I do not want to cut this option, as it's really convenient. But I want to prevent unintended double actions through clients automatically sending post requests twice without asking the user first. I'm not entirely sure if its a mobile browser specific problem.

Answer 1

You are focussing on the wrong end of the problem. If users are sending the post twice then its probably because they are not seeing a response at their end. Yes, you still need to plan for and handle the problem serverside, but addressing it on the client will not only reduce the number of occurrences getting back to your server, but also improving the user experience.

A real-time update at the front end means JavaScript. Also, when you're working with touch devices there is, by default, a latency of around a third of a second unless you explicitly disable some of the touch functionality.