Does discourse has return_path or return_link I can leverage to redirect to previous link after log in complete?

Shahrear_Chowdhury · August 20, 2026, 6:53pm

Why does after logging in Discourse doesn’t return to this path?

https://discourse.test.com/login?return_path=%2Fsecure-uploads%2Foriginal%2F2X%2F0%2F0f72a30f024ed5e37791d404a1fc611e90606650.pdf

Essentially we want below scenario to work

User visits a file thats not open to public they see 404 and redirected to login after few seconds and after logging they should come back to file and download?

Do I need to do anything custom? I just added return_path at the end using javascript on component.

Please help me out!

TY

NateDhaliwal · August 21, 2026, 12:01am

There is a cookie called ‘destination_url’ that adds the page before login (e.g. a topic), and uses the cookie, then removes it after login is successful.

github.com/discourse/discourse

frontend/discourse/app/routes/login.js

c81547dfd


      
          if (!currentUser) {
            if (isValidDestinationUrl(url)) {
              cookie("destination_url", url + query);
            } else if (DiscourseURL.isInternalTopic(referrer)) {
              cookie("destination_url", referrer);
            }
          }

github.com/discourse/discourse

frontend/discourse/app/instance-initializers/auth-complete.js

c81547dfd


      
          if (options.authenticated) {
            const destinationUrl =
              cookie("destination_url") || options.destination_url;
            if (destinationUrl) {
              removeCookie("destination_url");
              window.location.href = destinationUrl;
            } else if (window.location.pathname === getURL("/login")) {
              window.location = getURL("/");
            } else {
              window.location.reload();
            }
            return;
          }

Shahrear_Chowdhury · August 22, 2026, 8:30pm

thank you very much!

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Does discourse has return_path or return_link I can leverage to redirect to previous link after log in complete?

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