It can be helpful to know what controller or actions name the previous request had. This is a nice clean method to get that information.

Rails.application.routes.recognize_path(request.referrer) #=> {:controller => "posts", :action => "show"}

prev[:action] #=> "show"
prev = Rails.application.routes.recognize_path(request.referrer)
prev[:controller] #=> "posts"

Related External Links:

• Stack Overflow - good-way-to-get-controller-name-from-a-request-referer-in-rails