Find the referring URL and parse it

Question

Okay my problem is there are two websites with two different servers. What I'm trying to do is write some of the buttons for website 1, but on a page on my server (website 2).

So to do this the approach is

• User clicks on button from website 1.
• User is redirected to website 2.
• I need to know what page they came from so I know what product they are looking at. Which will be done by getting the referrer URL.
• I then need to parse the URL's productID's number.

example URL: website1.com/ProductDetails/?referrerPage=1&productID=#######&tab=Tile

I know that I need to use this piece of code to store the referrer URL in a string:

myReferrer = Request.UrlReferrer.ToString();

I don't really know where to place it tho. I'm guessing in my .cs file where my button is?

protected void btnEstimate_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    connection strings
    {
        does stuff
        {
            does stuff
        }

So my question is how do I get the referring URL, and then parse out the item ID?

Thanks for the help in advance. If anything is unclear please ask... this is my first time asking a question so I may be unclear. Thanks!

Answer 1

This should give you what you want:

Making Sense of ASP.NET Paths

Note that a fully qualified URL including querystring and extra path is a Uri instance rather than string. You can use the UriBuilder.Query Property to extract the query string parameter(s):

You need to parse the URI in the Page_Load method of the receiving site's page.

UriBuilder.Query Property

Answer 2

There's a server variable called HTTP_REFERER. You can access it with Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_REFERER")

It's misspelled, I know, but that's how you really need to call the server variable.

Your referrer server variable is only going to be populated if the user clicks on a link. AFAIK if you redirect, that variable is going to be empty.

Wikipedia Referer Article