How to determine the original HTTP Referer?

Question

I currently have a tracking system that logs referers for all tracked actions. To achieve this I'm using $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'] in PHP.

My issue is that sometimes, the above returns nothing. When it works, it returns the last referer, which seems to be completely WAI.

When I double-track using google analytics, GA returns the very site from which the request originated.

I'd like to know how I can achieve that myself, or if it is even possible?

Referer is only set if they got to the page by clicking on a link. If they type the URL into the browser address bar, there's no referer. And if they get there by Javascript doing `document.location.href=...`, browsers differ in whether they set referer. Finally, anonymizing proxies can be configured to filter out referers. — Barmar, May 23 '13 at 15:57

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered May 23 '13 at 15:31

0

The referer is the page that referred the browser to the current URL, so getting the last URL is to be expected, and desired.

If you want the URL of the current page then look at $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] instead.

answered May 23 '13 at 15:31

Quentin

His problem is that "sometimes, the above returns nothing", not the last URL. – Barmar May 23 '13 at 15:55
@Barmar — The sentence immediately following that implies otherwise. – Quentin May 23 '13 at 15:57

1 Answers1