Get last page visited

php url browser-history
Ricardo Neves picture Ricardo Neves · Jul 5, 2012 · Viewed 29.9k times · Source

I need to know if a person that comes to my website went from an another specific website. Example:

  • User A visits www.youtube.com/myvideo and clicks on a link to my website.
  • User B visits google, search my website and click the link.

Results Message on my page:

  • User A: Welcome! You already know how it works, register now!
  • User B: Welcome! Please watch our video first at www.youtube.com/myvideo

My question is:

  1. Is it possible to know the last url the user visited before entering my page?
    I already tried $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'] with PHP, but it's not working correctly and I read that does not work on all browsers.
  2. Is there any language or php script to get this url, working on all browser correctly?

Answer

Brad picture Brad · Jul 5, 2012

The HTTP referer header is the only way. This is the data that is given to you in PHP via $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'].

Note that this header will work in most cases. Also note that it can be easily spoofed.

Related questions

Get the full URL in PHP

I use this code to get the full URL: $actual_link = 'http://'.$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'].$_SERVER['PHP_SELF']; The problem is that I use some masks in my .htaccess, so what we see in the URL is not always …

Read More
Remove all special characters from a string

I am facing an issue with URLs, I want to be able to convert titles that could contain anything and have them stripped of all special characters so they only have letters and numbers and of course I would like …

Read More
Get URL query string parameters

What is the "less code needed" way to get parameters from a URL query string which is formatted like the following? www.mysite.com/category/subcategory?myqueryhash Output should be: myqueryhash I am aware of this approach: www.mysite.com/…

Read More