title: Options for passing data across HTTP redirects
body: <p>I am working on a Web application and need to pass data across HTTP redirects. For example:</p>
  
  <pre><code>http://foo.com/form.html 
  </code></pre>
  
  <p><strong>POSTs to</strong></p>
  
  <pre><code>http://foo.com/form/submit.html
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>If there is an issue with the data, the Response is redirected back to </p>
  
  <pre><code>http://foo.com/form.html?error=Some+error+message
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>and the query param "error"'s value is displayed on the page.</p>
  
  <p>Is there any other reliable way to pass data across redirects (ie HTTP headers, etc.).</p>
  
  <p>Passing the data as query params works but isn't ideal because:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>its cleartext (and in the query string, so SSL cant be relied on to encyrpt) so I wouldn't want to pass sensitive data</li>
  <li>URIs are limited in length by the browser (albiet the length is generally fairly long).</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p><strong>IMPORTANT: This platform is state-less and distributed across many app servers, so I can't track the data in a server-side session object.</strong></p>