'Back' browser action in Ruby on Rails

Question

Can the \'Back\' browser functionality be invoked from a Rails \'Back\' link?

Answer 1

This is working in Rails 5.1 along with Turbolinks.

link_to 'Back', 'javascript:history.back()'

Answer 2

You can use js function window.history.back()

 = link_to 'Back', onclick: "window.history.back();"

Answer 3

You can use link_to("Hello", :back) to generate <a href="javascript:history.back()">Hello</a>.

Answer 4

If you like me do not want the behaviour of link_to "cancel", :back you could implement a helper method which either links to the records index path or show path. (i.e teams_path or team_path(@team)

module CancelFormButtonHelper
  def cancel_button(record)
    index_path = record.class.to_s.pluralize.downcase + "_path"
    path = record.persisted? ? record : eval(index_path)

    link_to "Cancel", path
  end
end

which can then be used as <%= cancel_button @team %> within a form for example.

Answer 5

In Rails 3 and earlier:

link_to_function "Back", "history.back()"

In Rails 4, this method has been removed. See Andreas's comment.

Answer 6

In Rails 4.2, I got it to work with this:

<a href="javascript:history.back()">Refine Search</a>

I stole this off of @cpm’s answer, except that link_to("Refine Search", :back) didn’t do the job I wanted while pasting in the generated code <a href="javascript:history.back()">Refine Search</a> did it perfectly.