Laravel 5.4 get Referer

Question

I'm trying to get the Referer of my users. Like if they come from facebook, youtube, google or anything else.

Now I've tried something like that:

        $referrer = $this->request->headers->get('referer');
        $url = $referrer ? $this->to($referrer) : $this->getPreviousUrlFromSession();
        return $url ?: $this->to('/'); // returns: Method referer does not exist.

This:

        return $_SERVER["HTTP_REFERER"] // returns Undefined index: HTTP_REFERER

that:

session_start();

if ( !isset( $_SESSION["origURL"] ) )
    $_SESSION["origURL"] = $_SERVER["HTTP_REFERER"]; // returns Undefined index: HTTP_REFERER

But nothing worked like expected.

Does someone know a solution how I can check the referer?

I need that because I want to check if the user comes from some specific URL's and if so, I want to give the user some extra "clicks" to rank up. Something like a small affiliate system.

Answer 1

It seems like this will do what you are looking for :

Request::server('HTTP_REFERER').

You can read the Api DOC here :

http://laravel.com/api/5.0/Illuminate/Http/Request.html#method_server

Answer 2

The reason you get Undefined index: HTTP_REFERER is because not all requests have a HTTP_REFERER header, only most of the requests that come from other websites. If you visit a website directly with the url, you wont be sending a HTTP_REFERER header.

So, you should check if the header is set first.

if (!isset($_SESSION["origURL"]) && array_key_exists('HTTP_REFERER', $_SERVER))
    $_SESSION["origURL"] = $_SERVER["HTTP_REFERER"];