Identifiying the calling page

[Jon Hunt]

Hi

I'm trying to do something simple: find out which page had the link
which got me to the current page. I am using window.referrer, in IE6,
but it never has anything but blank in it. The scenario is that the
user must go though a sign on page to get to the goodies. If they go
direct, they get bumped to login:


if (window.referrer != "login_page" { window.location.href =
"login_page" }

But the referrer is no present. I've also tried looking at
window.history but to no avail. Are these all netscape specific and if
so, what is an IE equivalent?

Jon Hunt

 

[kaeli]

Hi

I'm trying to do something simple: find out which page had the link
which got me to the current page. I am using window.referrer, in IE6,
but it never has anything but blank in it. The scenario is that the
user must go though a sign on page to get to the goodies. If they go
direct, they get bumped to login:

Referer is never a good thing for relying on, as you've noticed. Anyone
with a modicum of programming knowledge or script kiddie tools can spoof
it, too.

The normal way of doing logins is to have the user enter their username
and password in a form, then have the form POST to a page that checks
the login and password server-side. If it is correct, it sets a cookie
or session variable that all other pages that need to know that the user
has logged in can check.

If you don't need all that, just set a cookie on the login page and
check it on the next. This is insecure as hell.

--
--
~kaeli~
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