In rails whats the best way to get the site that a user came from? I am getting conflicting info.

Question

If i enter a url directly into the address bar of the browser, i get the following results:

logger.debug ENV['HTTP_REFERER'] // => 
logger.debug request.referrer    // => /

So the first one gives me a blank result which is what I expected but the second gives me the root? Is this correct? It seems from the docs (http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionController/AbstractRequest.html#M000478) that they should return the same thing. And secondly, why does it return the root, if there was no referrer.

Answer 1

It returns the root correctly, as when you "hit" the app, you hit the root first (where routes.rb is), and then get redirected.

I would say request.referrer would be nice if used internaly on your application, to know wher (in the application) the user came from.

Whereas ENV['HTTP_REFERER'] works from a browser perspective, and will give you where the user came from before visiting your page.

Hope this helps you, and is clear enough.