check first few chars of a var

[se4b4ss]

i am working on checking referrer pages. i don't want to send info to the db if $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'] starts with "http://www.texascontractorratings.com" (ie i referred the user to myself.) how do i accomplish this?

thanks in advance,
steve

[JohnKrutsch]

I can thing of a bunch of different ways to accomplish this, here is one:

$me="http://www.texascontractorratings.com";
if(substr($_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'],0,strlen($me)) != $me){
//do your stuff

} 

[se4b4ss]

works perfectly.

thank you!
steve

[missing-score]

Please bear in mind that referer is not always available, and many people (like myself) dont allow the information to be sent for security and privacy reasons. You may wish to look into an alternative to checking referer information, such as sessions.

[se4b4ss]

sounds reasonable. do you have a link that explains how sessions can be used to track referrers?

thanks,
steve