Back button with PHP

miha

I have seen code for back button. Do you know what I have to do that it will work?

<?php session_start(); ?>

<a href="<?php
echo(isset($_SESSION['previous'])) ? $_SESSION['previous'] : '#';
$_SESSION['previous'] = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
?>"><img src="Back.gif" alt=".." width="6" height="8" />Back</a>

What actually means in code and link:
echo(isset($SESSION['previous'])) ? $SESSION['previous'] : '#';
$SESSION['previous'] = $SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];

gammaster

If you don know and maybe dont need the session stuff you can do the "go back stuff" with javascript.

<a href="javascript:history.go(-1)"><img src="Back.gif" alt=".." width="6" height="8" />Back</a>

execute

This syntax (something)? something : something else;
is like an if else statement
if(something){
something
} else {
something else;
}

Just a shorter way to write it.

You should use JavaScript for back button. Not PHP. Unless its sort of a script where you need to know, so then save the $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] into a session, then replace a back button link with it. REQUEST URI means the full address bar.

jazz_snob

I just did a project where the client, after it was done, wanted 'back' buttons on each page. I felt like saying:

"Do you see the big arrow in the top left of the browser window? Do you know what that does?"

Am I wrong, or is the browsers back button always going to work correctly? (with the exception being on submitted forms which redirect you to another page, in which case each time you try to 'back button' you get redirected).

For me, 99% of the time the browser's back button works fine.

miha

I have done with Java Script, but would like to know with Sesions.

If I have www.mywebsite.com/ page1.php and go on www.mywebsite.com/page2php, how to do that it will work
with session?

Please help me with all script that I will understand.

Weedpacket

IF there is a previous page to go back to it Might be in $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER']. Of course that will only work once unless you want to record every page the user visits in order, in which case you have an array of all the pages visited, in order, with each new URI added to the end as it's visited, and the "back button" is a link to the second-to-last entry in that array (the last entry being the current page).

Of course, then you'll need to drop the last entry off the array so that the previous page becomes the current page that's listed last on the list (and each time you visit a page you'll have know that the user got there by push the "back button" instead of going there directly, so instead of containing the link in the back button directly, it may need to be a link to a distinct back-handling page, with an id number in the query string to say which array index contains the link to go back to, and then that back-handling sends a redirect to the browser with the real back link ... of course, that doubles the number of requests needed for a page, slowing the site down, so that's probably not a great idea.

It's a lot of work to go to to replicate the browser's own page history functionality - and it's own back button. Especially since the browser's is more powerful because it's not limited to a single site.