How to redirect based on the previous routes in laravel

Question

There are two ways to delete a post in my app:

way 1:

urls:

/ -> posts/{post} -> posts/{post}

names:

home -> posts.show -> posts.destroy

way 2:

urls:

/posts -> /posts/{post} -> posts/{post}

names:

posts.index -> posts.show -> posts.destroy

how can redirect the user back to where he came from after deleting? I want him to be redirected to home in way 1 and to my posts in way 2.

I've seen that it could be done using a hidden input field like this:

<input type="hidden" name="redirect" value="home">

These are my routes:

Route::get('/', [PostController::class, 'latestPosts'])->name('home');

Route::middleware('auth')->group(function () {
    Route::resource('/posts', PostController::class);
});

but this won't really work because both ways are using the same blade view show, so should I just create a separate view for each one of them or is there a better way to do so?

Answer 1

I have faced this similar situation in my own project a few months ago. So I will suggest you to track the user navigation persistently through session to track the URL-state.

Follow these steps.

Step 1 :-

For for / URL, set this session(['redirect_url' => 'index']); to the respected controller method.

And for /post URL , set this session(['redirect_url' => 'post']); to the respected controller method.

Step 2 :-

Then you can set the redirect-url in hidden input field of the form like this.

    @if (session('redirect_url') == "index")
        <input type="hidden" name="redirect" value="index">
    @elseif (session('redirect_url') == "post")
        <input type="hidden" name="redirect" value="post">
    @endif

Step 3 :- Finally ,you can get the redirect_url value by the two ways.

1. by accessing the input hidden field of the form.
2. by directly accessing the session-value

It is demo to retrieve the session value by directly accessing it.

Get the session-value in the posts/{post}(named posts.destroy) controller method and redirect the user with the following logic.

if(session('redirect_url') == "index")
{
  return redirect('/')->with('success', 'Deletion completed 
  successfully'); //redirected to `home`
}
elseif(session('redirect_url') == "post")
{
   return redirect('/posts')->with('success', 'Deletion completed 
   successfully'); //redirected to `posts.index`
}

Try this, it will work for sure.