URL::Previous() returns incomplete path

Question

How I’m studying the book Code Bright, from time to time there are some errors that I take a long time to resolve. However, I couldn’t find a solution in Google.

By doing the Redirect::to() from one route to another the previous full address should be displayed, but only my URL appears vhost without the remainder of the route.

Code Bright book code:

Route::get('first', function()
{
    // redirect to the second route
    return Redirect::to('second');
});

Route::get('second', function()
{
    return URL::previous();
});

When I walk into the endereço/first and I’m redirected to the route endereço/second, should appear written endereço/first but only address appears.

Question

What would be the right solution to solve the return url print?

Detail, I checked on github that as far as I understood the Redirect::to generates a 302 call that does not transmit the information from where the route request is coming from. Perhaps you are wrong about this.

Answer 1

The method URL::previous() is based on HTTP Referer which is roughly an information your browser sends to the site being accessed in the request header (HTTP Headers), informing which URL the user was at the time of the request.

This behavior of sending the Referer is not homogeneous and your browser may not be sending this information.

To check the header HTTP Referer was sent or not, you can do as follows:

//  PHP "puro"
echo $_SERVER['REFERER'];

// Laravel
echo Request::header('referer');

If the user has the page reloaded, this information will be lost, it only exists if the user is accessing the page through a Link (<a />)

Best practice is to implement a mechanism that stores the current page in session, such as this:

// Use como filtro, antes das rotas, ou em seu controller, 
// o importante é executar o código em todas as páginas
if(Session::get('url_atual')) {
    Session::put('url_anterior', Session::get('url_atual'));
} 
Session::put('url_atual', URL::current());

And then, if you need to create a link or redirect to the previous page, just use:

Redirect::to(Session::get('url_anterior'));

---

Nota1: the above example is nut implemented, use it cautiously in a production system.

Note 2: See Method Implementation in: https://github.com/laravel/framework/blob/master/src/Illuminate/Routing/UrlGenerator.php lines 72 to 82:

public function previous()
{
    return $this->to($this->request->headers->get('referer'));
}