Is there a way of extracing controller name from a URL?
I don't think so because the url could be completely different from the controller path because of routes. There's 'controller.controller_name' or 'controller.controller_path' (http:// api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionController/Base.html#M000433) which you can use to figure which controller's being used from within the app..
My situation is slightly different. I want to look at request.env['HTTP_REFERER'] and take a different action based on what is stored in it. For example if the URL belongs to controller a, then take one action and if its controller b then take a different action.
params[:controller] will give you the controller name. params[:action] will give you the action name.