Frameworks like Next.js (React π)
, Nuxt.js (Vue π)
and Universal (Angular β€οΈ)
allow you to register redirects.
-
Next.js allows you to register redirects using
redirects
function insidenext.config.js
-
Nuxt.js allows you to register redirects using
redirect-module
innuxt.config.js
-
Universal allows you to register redirects at server engine router level. e.g.
@nguniversal/express-engine
But in all the cases when your app is served, it should stay on top of a nodejs
server to handle all the requests.
But I want my application to be a static served application that lives only on client, without a server π’
Well, this is the single limitation of all the frameworks redirects, but don't be sad, we have a solution, that comes with it's own limitations π
Say Hello to HTML Redirections π
From what MDN says, HTML Redirections are a way to make redirects using a meta
tag in your HTML head when you don't have control over the server.
Example:
<meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="0; URL=https://example.com/">
This is all we need to know. The 0
in the beginning of the content
attribute is the delay in seconds when redirect should happen.
Limitations
- RegExp is not supported, like in server redirects
- Status code cannot be changed
- A small payload delay for fetched HTML
Taking this idea, we can apply it to our frameworks, and create static HTML redirects. Taking into consideration that all frameworks have a folder where you can put your public static assets, we can create html files with our meta
tag for redirects.
-
Next.js
withReact
usespublic
folder -
Nuxt.js
withVue
usesstatic
folder -
Universal
withAngular
usesassets
folder
Example (Next.js)
Let's say that on my iamandrewluca.com
website I want to have addresses that redirect to my social profiles. This is a good example in case that you want someone to fast access your social profile, or in case you change it, Just change the redirect address e.g.
-
iamandrewluca.com/dev
β‘οΈdev.to/iamandrewluca
-
iamandrewluca.com/github
β‘οΈgithub.com/iamandrewluca
-
iamandrewluca.com/twitter
β‘οΈtwitter.com/iamandrewluca
...
What I have to do now is to create 3 files in my public
folder:
public/dev.html
<meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="0; URL=https://dev.to/iamandrewluca">
public/github.html
<meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="0; URL=https://github.com/iamandrewluca">
public/twitter.html
<meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="0; URL=https://twitter.com/iamandrewluca">
Next we build our static html application:
npm run build # build app
npx next export # export as static html
npx serve out # serve static at http://localhost:5000
Now if I access http://localhost:5000/dev
it will automatically go to https://dev.to/iamandrewluca
.
- No server
- No JavaScript.
You can check this live example on my simple website iamandrewluca.com
F.A.Q
Why don't do this in javascript with
location.href
?
If you will do this in JavaScript you will have to wait the whole bundle of Js to load in browser then redirect, this takes time. Read also this article from Kent C. Dodds
What about redirect status code?
Unfortunately using this method you cannot set redirect status code, it will be a simple 200 status code, because it's a html served page.
Why not use hosting service
redirects
functionality?
If your hosting service supports such thing, sure do. Should be event faster, and you can also change redirect status code
How does browser know to open
/dev.html
from/dev
?
This is not a browser thing, also server deals with this. Most servers have a list of static files to be served by default like: *.html
, index.html
, index.php
and others. Also instead of public/dev.html
you can have public/dev/index.html
, will have same effect. Use this in case you need nested redirects.
Where is
html
andhead
tag from HTML files?
Browsers automatically add these tags. Also less html, faster response.
It is possible to use RegExp to catch multiple routes?
Unfortunately this is not possible.
Bonus π 𧨠π
NPM Package that generates automatically HTML files from a JSON file!
Having redirects.json
{
"redirects": [
{ "from": "/dev", "to": "https://dev.to/iamandrewluca" },
{ "from": "/github", "to": "https://github.com/iamandrewluca" },
{ "from": "/twitter", "to": "https://twitter.com/iamandrewluca" }
]
}
And executing:
npx redirects.json out
Will generate all above files. You can add this step as a post build step.
That's all for today! Thanks for reading my blog posts!
Cover Photo by Javier Quiroga on Unsplash
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