PHP: Returning a user to their original page after login

Answer 1

On login page:

<form action="controller/LoginController" method="post">
<?php

if($_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER']){
  echo '<input type="hidden" name="l" value="'.$_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'].'" />';
}

?>
<!-- the rest of the form -->
<input type="submit" />
</form>

At login controller, you take in the $_POST['l'] value and see whether or not this URL is on your own website. If it isn't, redirect to your default page, else redirect to this URL.

Make sure that on your login page if user is already logged in, you redirect the user back to home page or something. This will prevent cases like redirecting back to login.

$_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'] is a browser responsibility. It is also most of the time rather reliable. If the browser doesn't send, or if you are worried about it, you can use session instead.

on every page simply set $_SESSION['lastvisitpage'] to the current page URL. On login then you redirect to $_SESSION['lastvisitpage'].

Answer 2

I would suggest make an AJAX call to login the user and on successful AJAX response just refresh the current page.

Answer 3

It would be better if you store the last visited page on your own, maybe with the help of a session.

If the user requests a page from your website the first time, start a new session and initialize last-URI with the current URI. Update this last-URI whenever another page is requested until it’s the login page. Now if the authentication is successful, you can redirect to user to the URI in last-URI.

And if you have a login form on every page, use a hidden input where the current URI is stored in.

Answer 4

if(user_not_logged_in())
{
    $link = "http://example.com/login?continue=path/to/current/page";
    echo '<a href="'.$link.'">Loign</a>';
}

This is how I, and sites like Google, does it. You would need to make sure that you check the continue variable and sanitize it of weird URLs first however.

Another option is use AJAX, and allow the user to login from any page. User logs in, you submit the form via AJAX, refresh when the request comes back.

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I think you might be asking if the user specifically clicks on the login link on a menu, you automatically think that the user wants to be redirected to the page that they pressed the button from. This I believe is a flaw in logic. Take StackOverflow. Just because I press login doesn't mean I want to return to the question I was last on.

However, there are some instances that it would be correct to assume the person wants to go back, such as if I upvoted a question and got the popup telling me to login. If I clicked the link there, it would be safe to assume that I want to go back. But just the login link on the nav bar doesn't have that implied meaning.