Java Glossary : referer

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referer

Let us say I put this link on my web page: Visit Borland! The HTML for the link looks like this:

<a href="http://www.borland.com">Borland</a>

When somebody clicks it, they will be taken to the Borland site. How do the Borland people know it was my site that referred them there? The browser automatically inserts a field called Referer in the header of the HTTP request packet sent to Borland to fetch their home page that says the link came from mindprod.com/jglossr.html. Borland might write a CGI program to extract it by refering to a variable like HTTP_REFERER.

Opera allows users to decide themselves if referring pages will be transmitted, under File | Preferences | Privacy | Enable referrer logging. Webmasters who want to analyze their traffic probably don't like that feature. Some proxies are configured to strip the header or insert a bogus header, so you can't rely on the referer field being set correctly.

affiliate ¤ CGI ¤ RFC 2616

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