# Best Practices.... passing referring controller / action **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [September 28, 2006, 5:06am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/best-practices-passing-referring-controller-action/70314 "2006-09-28T05:06:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![sw0rdfish](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/edb3f5/32.png) [@sw0rdfish](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/sw0rdfish)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2006, 5:06am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/best-practices-passing-referring-controller-action/70314/1 "2006-09-28T05:06:49Z")
Hello folk… I’m wondering what the best practice is for passing referring actions to a new action. For example if I have an action that I use a million times in my application I want to be able to call it, and then be returned to the action that called it… whatever it may be. Currently I’m using parameters… When I call the method with a link\_to for example, I do something like this in the view… \<%= link\_to ‘do this’ :action =\> ‘do\_this\_action’, :id =\> @id\_of\_something, :from\_controller =\> params[:controller], :from\_action =\> params[:action] %\> now… I’m 100% sure that’s not the way I should do it, because the URL becomes… [http://0.0.0.0/controller/action/1?from\_controller=refering\_controller&from\_action=ref\_action](http://0.0.0.0/controller/action/1?from_controller=refering_controller&from_action=ref_action) and then everyone knows the names of my actions… not only is it messy… I’m sure there’s some security issues there too… I guess I could pass these things to a session, is that the best way? Thanks in advance guys! ---
**Author:** ![sw0rdfish](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/edb3f5/32.png) [@sw0rdfish](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/sw0rdfish)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2006, 6:41am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/best-practices-passing-referring-controller-action/70314/2 "2006-09-28T06:41:00Z")
sw0rdfish ïèøåò: > I’m wondering what the best practice is for passing referring actions > to a new action. For example if I have an action that I use a million > times in my application I want to be able to call it, and then be > returned to the action that called it… whatever it may be. > > I guess I could pass these things to a session, is that the best way? > Thanks in advance guys! > People use session to store the url where you need to return to. You can > retrieve it with request.request\_uri ---
**Author:** ![sw0rdfish](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/edb3f5/32.png) [@sw0rdfish](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/sw0rdfish)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2006, 4:20pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/best-practices-passing-referring-controller-action/70314/3 "2006-09-28T16:20:02Z")
So you would store the entire URL, and not just the action / controller? And request.request\_uri returns the current URL? Anyone else have input on this? Not that I don’t trust Maxim, just more opions the better 🙂 Thanks guys! ---
**Author:** ![sw0rdfish](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/edb3f5/32.png) [@sw0rdfish](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/sw0rdfish)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2006, 4:22pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/best-practices-passing-referring-controller-action/70314/4 "2006-09-28T16:22:03Z")
So you would store the entire URL, and not just the action / controller? And request.request\_uri returns the current URL? Anyone else have input on this? Not that I don’t trust Maxim, just more opions the better 🙂 Thanks guys! ---
**Author:** ![sw0rdfish](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/edb3f5/32.png) [@sw0rdfish](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/sw0rdfish)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2006, 4:34pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/best-practices-passing-referring-controller-action/70314/5 "2006-09-28T16:34:07Z")
I was looking around the recepie book, and it talks of using… request.env[“HTTP\_REFERER”] Would that work? P.S. sorry for the double post previosuly. Google went wonky on me. ---
**Author:** ![sw0rdfish](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/edb3f5/32.png) [@sw0rdfish](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/sw0rdfish)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2006, 5:40pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/best-practices-passing-referring-controller-action/70314/6 "2006-09-28T17:40:30Z")
Well the ultimate goal is to be able to go back to the action I came from once I’m finished in the “current” action. Eg. View an Order -\> call action “edit item name” -\> go back to view order OR view and ITEM -\> call action “edit item name” -\> go back to view ITEM I want the action “edit item name” to be the same one for both calls, so I need to save the action I was in prior to calling “edit item name”… I think putting a filter action in the aplication.rb file that runs before each action calll to store the refering action / controller into a session would be a good way of doing it. ---
**Author:** ![sw0rdfish](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/edb3f5/32.png) [@sw0rdfish](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/sw0rdfish)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2006, 5:18pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/best-practices-passing-referring-controller-action/70314/7 "2006-09-28T17:18:23Z")
On 28 September 2006 18:28, sw0rdfish wrote: > I was looking around the recepie book, and it talks of using… > > request.env[“HTTP\_REFERER”] HTTP\_REFERER is URL from which the HTTP request came (what page linked to current page). > Would that work? > It depends on what do you want to store: current request URL or the one, > from > where user came to current page. ---
**Author:** ![sw0rdfish](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/edb3f5/32.png) [@sw0rdfish](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/sw0rdfish)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2006, 8:21am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/best-practices-passing-referring-controller-action/70314/8 "2006-09-29T08:21:20Z")
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