How to obtain two previous page's URL in php

Question

I have a page named Login.php. I need the URL of the page before the last page.

When the user login form will submit to check_login.php which checks their username and password. Then I will redirect the user to index.php.

The issue is I want the user to be redirected to the second to last page they visited.

EXAMPLE:

First URL: www.example.com/posts/1

Second URL: www.example.com/login.php

Third URL: wwww.example.com/check_login.php

So, if username and password are correct => header('location: www.example.com/posts/1');

There is a solution to get the previous URL:

// login.php
$_SESSION['url'] = $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];

// check_login.php
header('location: '.$_SESSION['url']);

But I need to get the second to last URL, not the last URL. How can I do this in PHP?

Answer 1

Do what other people have done:

First solution:

Create a hidden field in your pages so that when a user clicks on login it will take him to the login.php page with the previous link. Then you can do anything you want (like, saving it to $_SESSION['url']) with this link.

Second Solution:

Imagine you have an anchor like this: <a href="login.php">login</a>. Instead of using just login.php you can use login.php?redirect_to=http://example.com/post/1 so that you can access the url from your login.php page with a $_GET['redirect_to'] request.

NOTE: Always remember to sanitize user input data.