Question

I have the need to pass a URL to Magento, where it should redirect the User after completing the logout. To store it, I do the following:

$BackTo = Mage::app()->getRequest()->getParam('backto');

if(!empty($BackTo)) {
    Mage::getSingleton('core/session')->setBackTo($BackTo);
}

When needed, I retrieve the URL using Mage::getSingleton('core/session')->getBackTo(). The issue is that, while this works well on login, it doesn’t work on logout (where it’s most needed). I can store the session variable, I can also immediately retrieve it, but, when I am in logout.phtml, where the redirect JavaScript is located, such variable is set to null.

I suspect that the redirect performed by Magento upon logout has something to do with this “disappearing” session variable, but I can’t say for sure.

For completeness, here is the relevant code (there’s more code than this, but they are mainly auxiliary functions, which don’t get called on logout).

Account Controller

class MyPackage_Redirectplugin_AccountController extends Mage_Customer_AccountController {
    /**
     * @see AccountController:logoutAction()
     */
    public function logoutAction() {
        $this->_getSession()
            ->logout()
            ->setBeforeAuthUrl(Mage::getUrl());

        // Store the "back to" URL in a session variable
        $this->StoreBackToURL();

        $this->_redirect('*/*/logoutSuccess');
    }

protected function StoreBackToURL() {
    // Store the value of the "backto" argument, if it was passed
    $BackTo = Mage::app()->getRequest()->getParam('backto');

    if(!empty($BackTo)) {
        Mage::getSingleton('core/session')->setBackTo($BackTo);
        // At this point I can see the correct value stored in the session variable
    }
}

}

Logout.phtml

// The following command returns null
$redirectURL = Mage::getSingleton('core/session')->getBackTo();

Thanks in advance for the help.

Update 12/09/25 – Found a workaround

Since I couldn’t find a way to pass a session variable to the logout page opened by redirect, I chose an alternative way: I’m passing it via the URL. Specifically, I implemented a logoutAction() which calls $this->_redirect('*/*/logoutSuccess', array('myvar' => $MyValue));.

In the template, where I have to do the redirect, I simply read such parameter using Mage::helper('core')->urlDecode(Mage::app()->getRequest()->getParam('myvar'));.

I’m aware that there might have been better ways to implement the whole thing, but I needed a bug fix solution and this does the job. Thanks to all people who answered.

Answer 1

Update 12/09/25 – Found a workaround
This workaround has also been posted in the question itself.

Since I couldn’t find a way to pass a session variable to the logout page opened by redirect, I chose an alternative way: I’m passing it via the URL. Specifically, I implemented a logoutAction() which calls $this->_redirect('*/*/logoutSuccess', array('myvar' => $MyValue));.

In the template, where I have to do the redirect, I simply read such parameter using Mage::helper('core')->urlDecode(Mage::app()->getRequest()->getParam('myvar'));.

I’m aware that there might have been better ways to implement the whole thing, but I needed a bug fix solution and this does the job. Thanks to all people who answered.