Re: Referer use

Henrik Frystyk Nielsen (frystyk@ptsun00.cern.ch)
Sat, 9 Jul 94 16:33:30 +0200


> Date: Sat, 9 Jul 1994 02:26:47 +0200
> From: Jared_Rhine@hmc.edu
> Subject: Referer use

> I've got a custom-made feedback form in which I would like to determine
> automatically what page the user was on before they selected a link to take
> them to the feedback form. The description of Referer sounded like it would
> do this, but apparently I misunderstand the semantics.
>
> The spec on the CERN Web server says the Referer header is "the address of
> the document from which the URI in the request was obtained." However, it
> appears that I'm getting the current URL. Is anyone else using the Referer
> header in the sense I want to use it above?

The World-Wide Web Common Code Library version 2.16pre2 has the
following output (taken from Line Mode Browser having
http://info.cern.ch/ as the current document - only the interesting
part is shown)

HTAccess.... Loading document http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject
HTTP Tx..... GET /hypertext/WWW/TheProject HTTP/1.0
Accept: */*; q=0.300
Accept: application/octet-stream; q=0.100
Accept: text/plain
Accept: text/html
Accept: image/jpeg
Accept: image/x-tiff
Accept: image/gif
Accept: application/postscript
Referer: http://info.cern.ch/ <------ REFERER FIELD -------
From: frystyk@ptsun03.cern.ch
User-Agent: CERN-LineMode/2.14 libwww/2.16pre2

This is, I believe, what you are looking for!

-- cheers --

Henrik Frystyk
frystyk@dxcern.cern.ch
+ 41 22 767 8265
World-Wide Web Project,
CERN, CH-1211 Geneva 23,
Switzerland