PHP get previous page url after redirect

Question

I want to have a navigation bar that tells the user where they just came from. Example: Homepage -> Post

But if they are in their posts manager and click on a post, I want it to say Posts manager -> Post

I read that $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'] is not good enough to get the full url so that's not useful as I want the navigation bar all clickable

Any help is much appreciated!

Answer 1

I believe what you want is called breadcrumbs.

What to use for navigation chain storage is actually up to you. You might use even $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'] if you want, but that'd be unreliable as it's client-side. Usual way to store such chain is actual URI or session.

For example, you have such URI: http://www.example.com/post_manager/post

Then you can iterate through explode("/", $_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"]) to get each step.

That's basic explanation to guide you to a right direction. You can google alot of samples and snippets using keyword breadcrumbs.

On the topic of saving last visited location (the way to determine wether abonent came from manager or homepage): you can use session's variables to do that. Here's an example:

This way you can set a variable on your homepage:

<?php
    session_start(); 
    $_SESSION['previous_location'] = 'homepage';
?>

And then you just access it from another page:

<?php
    $previous_location = $_SESSION['previous_location'];
?>

It's important to set session.save_path in your PHP configuration file or your sessions might get lost.