php - How to get the http referer in laravel?

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