HTTP referer issue

Question

I have this view rendering a static page, but I cannot seem to catch the referer of the page.

def landing(request, referer='google'):
    ''' Loads the landing page '''
    msg = ''
    if request.method == 'GET':
        referer = request.META['HTTP_REFERER']
        return render_to_response('index.html',
            {'WSGI_DIR': settings.WSGI_DIR,'csrf_value': get_token(request),
                'referer':referer},context_instance=RequestContext(request))

It keeps popping:

KeyError at / 'HTTP_REFERER'

I've imported everything needed. Does anyone have a clue?

Answer 1

You should be using request.META.get('HTTP_REFERER'). Not every request will have a Referer header, and if one doesn't you will get exactly this exception. Test if the result of get() is not None to see if the header was sent.

Answer 2

Make this change to fix the key error:

referer = request.META.get('HTTP_REFERER', '')