Question

I’ve worked through Ruby on Rails Tutorial by Michael Hartl, and have also implemented a small login form included on the navbar of my application (so a user can either login from the actual login page or from the navbar login). If a user logs in from the login page, I do want them to be redireced to the root_url.

However, if the user logs in from the navbar form, I want them to stay on the same page with a “Successfully logged in!” message at the top of the page. How can I do this?

My code is as follows:

From the _header.html.erb file:

<%= form_tag sessions_path, class: "navbar-form pull-right" do %>
  <%= text_field_tag :email, nil, class: "input-small", placeholder: "Email" %>
  <%= password_field_tag :password, nil, class: "input-small", placeholder: "Password" %>
  <%= check_box_tag :remember_me, 1, params[:remember_me], title: "select to remember login" %>
  <%= submit_tag "Sign in", class: "btn btn-mini" %>
<% end %>

From the sessions_helper.rb file:

def redirect_back_or(default)
  redirect_to(session[:return_to] || default)
  session.delete(:return_to)
end

def store_location
  session[:return_to] = request.url
end

I have tried to leverage the redirect_back_or method from the sessions_helper.rb, but it seems to be capturing a session path as the session[:return_to] value, rather than the originating page for the login request. I would appreciate your ideas.

Answer 1

I was finally able to figure this out…

In my sessions_helper.rb file (which is already included in the ApplicationController), I add the following code:

def store_location_login
  session[:referral_url] = request.referer
end

def redirect_back_login_or(default)
  if URI(signin_path).path == URI(session[:referral_url]).path
  redirect_to root_url
else
  redirect_to(session[:referral_url] || default)
end

session.delete(:referral_url)

Then I changed my SessionsController create action to read:

def create
  user = User.find_by_email(params[:email].downcase)
  store_location_login

  if user && user.authenticate(params[:password])
    if params[:remember_me]
      sign_in user
    else
      sign_in_temp user
    end

    flash[:success] = "Successfully logged in!"
    redirect_back_login_or root_url

  else
    flash.now[:error] = 'Invalid email/password combination'
    render 'new'

  end
end

These changes result in the desired behavior:

• logging in from the main login page, on successful login it redirects the user to the the root_url
• logging in from the login form in the site navbar, it redirects back to the page of origin (unless the page of origin is the main login form)
• this uses the same Session controller create method for each

I’m guessing this could be refactored some, but it works.