I finished my survey in concept a few people tested it out. The survey consists of 44 questions, divided in groups. De respondents are randomly divided in 3 groups two groups receive a practice at the end of the questionary which they can download.
A few people who tested can completely fill in the questionary, but others receive, after clicking on the 'next' button the next error message:

'Bad Request; The CSRF token could not be verified; The request coult not be understood by the surver due to malformed syntax. Please do not repeat the request without modifications. If you think this is a server error, please contact the webmaster'

After this message they cannot continue. They cannot fill in the questionairy again after this because they are already registerd so I lose these participants.

I was looking on this forum for a solution, I saw that more people had this problem, the answers are very complex and diverse. Is there a relative simple solution for this problem?

Thanx for your time and answer.


Ellen van Breemen

Ellen53 wrote: Is there a relative simple solution for this problem?

No.
The error message is not triggered by one certain root cause.
The topic is "Yii 1.1 CSRF token validation" and you will find many different user stories.

What php version is used? What LimeSurvey version is used?

thanks for your reply:
The limesurvey version is 2.06
I cannot find the php version, where can I find that info

With LimeSurvey 2.06 you will run into issues these days. It's no longer supported and you will find it harder to run LS 2.06 with newer PHP versions.

The limesurvey version is 2.06

The problem is likely with your "Windows 95".

Jokes aside: 2.06 is from 2016 or something. So your software has not received any updates and bug fixes for about 4 years. The software is also not supported for a couple of years now. You should really think about doing an update to the latest LS 3.x LTS (NOT LS 4.x!!!).

Man, I still get that error in version 5.0.3

Is it because the form has been opened without typing anything for a long time? If so, is there a way to increase the inactivity time?

Is it because the form has been opened without typing anything for a long time? If so, is there a way to increase the inactivity time?

Could be. The "inactivity time" is called session time out and is part of the settings of your server (PHP).

Man, I still get that error in version 5.0.3Is it because the form has been opened without typing anything for a long time? If so, is there a way to increase the inactivity time?

The CSRF token issue is usually not cause by session timeout.  The default php session is set to 1440 seconds (24 minutes). You can check the session setting via phpinfo inside LimeSurvey.

In shared hosting environments it makes sense to change the LimeSurvey cookie/session names in config.php to prevent mixup in the session folder and your browser.
But first, you might update to 5.0.7 to check again.
If the issue is still there, try to find out if there is a certain trigger. Sometimes it is clicking a button or a certain link. That is important, cause it's not always a server issue. Sometimes the php code has a glitch.