[ruby-on-rails] How to redirect to previous page in Ruby On Rails?

Why does redirect_to(:back) not work for you, why is it a no go?

redirect_to(:back) works like a charm for me. It's just a short cut for redirect_to(request.env['HTTP_REFERER'])

http://apidock.com/rails/ActionController/Base/redirect_to (pre Rails 3) or http://apidock.com/rails/ActionController/Redirecting/redirect_to (Rails 3)

Please note that redirect_to(:back) is being deprecated in Rails 5. You can use

redirect_back(fallback_location: 'something') instead (see http://blog.bigbinary.com/2016/02/29/rails-5-improves-redirect_to_back-with-redirect-back.html)