Location-aware “Cancel” buttons in forms

For a client app, I needed to have “Cancel” buttons in my forms, which would send the user back to the previous page he was on. The restful_authentication plugin generates authenticated_system.rb, which gives us the following methods:

# Store the URI of the current request in the session.
# We can return to this location by calling #redirect_back_or_default.
def store_location
session[:return_to] = request.request_uri
end

# Redirect to the URI stored by the most recent store_location call or
# to the passed default.  Set an appropriately modified
#   after_filter :store_location,  nly => [:index, :new, :show, :edit]
# for any controller you want to be bounce-backable.
def redirect_back_or_default(default)
redirect_to(session[:return_to] || default)
session[:return_to] = nil
end

I stored the previous page’s URL in session, and added an after filter in application.rb:

after_filter :store_location, :except => [ :new, :edit ]

In my form, I have two buttons:

#  View - form has a cancel button
= submit_tag 'Cancel', :name => 'cancel_button'
= submit_tag 'Save', :disabled => false, :disable_with => "Please wait..."

In my controller, I just check if params[:cancel_button] is not nil (send the user back to the stored uri in session if so, otherwise process the form):

def create
if params[:cancel_button]
redirect_back_or_default(dashboard_path)
else
@client = Client.build(params[:client])
if @client.save
flash[:notice] = "Client saved."
redirect_to client_url(@client)
else
flash[:error] = "Client not saved."
render :action => "new"
end
end
end