Take user back to previous page after logging in?

Question

I have a controller called Accounts, with the views signin and signout.

The corresponding functions look like this:

function signin()
{
    if (!empt         


        

Answer 1

Here's how I do it with referer

I have 2 login forms, one is a form at the top of all pages for easily sign in, the other is on login action. If the user comes in using the form at the top, the form submission then goes to login page and you can use $this->referer() to redirect the user back.

But the problem is that, if the user types the password wrong or enter invalid credential, he will then end up on the login page. If he then enters the right username+password, and redirection occurs using $this->referer(), which in this case is itself. The user then could then either 1. get redirected back to login page again or 2. even worse can get stuck in an infinite loop b/c login will keep redirecting to itself.

So, I add some logic to check to make sure that referer is not login page. Also, I add another logic to store $this->referer() the first time the user lands on login page, we we know where exactly the page before login page.

To store the page before login page, put this code at the end of the action (login view rendering is about to begin)

//get the current url of the login page (or current controller+action)
$currentLoginUrl = strtolower( "/" .$this->name ."/" .$this->action );
if( $this->referer() != $currentLoginUrl  )
{
    //store this value to use once user is succussfully logged in
    $this->Session->write('beforeLogin_referer', $this->referer($this->Auth->redirect(), true)) ) ;  //if referer can't be read, or if its not from local server, use $this->Auth->rediret() instead
}

Now put the code to redirect in the part of the code where authentication is succesful (or in if( $this->Auth->user() ){ } ):

//get the login page url again (by gettting its controller, or plural of Model, and this current page action and make the url)
$currentLoginUrl = strtolower( "/" .$this->name ."/" .$this->action );

//if the referer page is not from login page, 
if( $this->referer() != $currentLoginUrl  )
{
    //use $this->referer() right away
    $this->redirect($this->referer($this->Auth->redirect(), true));  //if referer can't be read, or if its not from local server, use $this->Auth->rediret() instead
}
else
{
    //if the user lands on login page first, rely on our session 
    $this->redirect( $this->Session->read('beforeLogin_referer') );
}

Hope this works for you.