How do I get the redirected url from the nodejs request module?

Question

I'm trying to follow through on a url that redirects me to another page using the nodejs request module.

Combing through the docs I could not find anything that allows me to retrieve the url after the redirect.

My code is as follows:

var request = require("request"),
    options = {
      uri: 'http://www.someredirect.com/somepage.asp',
      timeout: 2000,
      followAllRedirects: true
    };

request( options, function(error, response, body) {

    console.log( response );

});

score 87 · Accepted Answer · edited Nov 07 '14 at 14:19

87

There are two very easy ways to get hold of the last url in a chain of redirects.

var r = request(url, function (e, response) {
  r.uri
  response.request.uri
})

The uri is a object. uri.href contains the url, with query parameters, as a string.

The code comes from a comment on a github issue by request's creator: https://github.com/mikeal/request/pull/220#issuecomment-5012579

Example:

var request = require('request');
var r = request.get('http://google.com?q=foo', function (err, res, body) {
  console.log(r.uri.href);
  console.log(res.request.uri.href);

  // Mikael doesn't mention getting the uri using 'this' so maybe it's best to avoid it
  // please add a comment if you know why this might be bad
  console.log(this.uri.href);
});

This will print http://www.google.com/?q=foo three times (note that we were redirected to an address with www from one without).

edited Nov 07 '14 at 14:19

Dan Abramov

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answered Jun 28 '13 at 10:48

gabrielf

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1

You said that the above code redirects three times, how do I know which run is the last iteration? – hitautodestruct Jul 03 '13 at 11:11
1

It doesn't redirect three times. It prints the URL you were redirected to in three different ways. Sorry if that was unclear. – gabrielf Aug 19 '13 at 14:45
1

@gabrielf, No `this`, because we might use `es6`. – Gaurav Gandhi Dec 09 '16 at 04:31
4

`res.request.uri.href` will crash if the given url is bad url like 'sdfdsfdgdfgdfgdfg.sdfsdfsdf', so either you can check for `err` or presence of `res` if you want to use this option. – Sumit Jan 26 '17 at 06:49

score 35 · Answer 2 · edited Dec 14 '15 at 00:09

35

To find the redirect url try this:

var url = 'http://www.google.com';
request({ url: url, followRedirect: false }, function (err, res, body) {
  console.log(res.headers.location);
});

edited Dec 14 '15 at 00:09

AJcodez

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answered Dec 22 '13 at 22:58

Michael

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Ended up here after looking for "don't follow redirects in request in node" so thanks! Wasn't sure how to include that option. – araneae Jul 05 '14 at 18:54
8

`res.headers.location` did the job for me. – Felix Jan 16 '15 at 20:26
6

May not work as expected if multiple redirects are involved, giving the first redirect rather than the last. – Crazometer Jun 22 '16 at 07:47

score 6 · Answer 3 · answered May 22 '13 at 15:19

request gets redirects by default, it can get through 10 redirects by default. You can check this in the docs. Downside of this is that you would not know if url you get is a redirected one or original one by default options.

For example:

request('http://www.google.com', function (error, response, body) {
    console.log(response.headers) 
    console.log(body) // Print the google web page.
})

gives output

> { date: 'Wed, 22 May 2013 15:11:58 GMT',
  expires: '-1',
  'cache-control': 'private, max-age=0',
  'content-type': 'text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1',
  server: 'gws',
  'x-xss-protection': '1; mode=block',
  'x-frame-options': 'SAMEORIGIN',
  'transfer-encoding': 'chunked' }

but if you give option followRedirect as false

request({url:'http://www.google.com',followRedirect :false}, function (error, response, body) {
    console.log(response.headers) 
    console.log(body)
});

it gives

> { location: 'http://www.google.co.in/',
  'cache-control': 'private',
  'content-type': 'text/html; charset=UTF-8',
  date: 'Wed, 22 May 2013 15:12:27 GMT',
  server: 'gws',
  'content-length': '221',
  'x-xss-protection': '1; mode=block',
  'x-frame-options': 'SAMEORIGIN' }
<HTML><HEAD><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8">
<TITLE>302 Moved</TITLE></HEAD><BODY>
<H1>302 Moved</H1>
The document has moved
<A HREF="http://www.google.co.in/">here</A>.
</BODY></HTML>

So don't worry about getting the redirected content. But if you want to know if it is redirected or not set followRedirect false and check the location header in the response.

I don't understand your last sentence "If you want to know if it is redirected set `followRedirect` to `false`"? Wouldn't that stop the redirection process? — hitautodestruct, May 22 '13 at 15:22
By default you wont get 3xx response because of automatic redirection. So if you wish to know you were redirected/don't want to redirect you must give it as false. It is just for finding out redirection. — user568109, May 22 '13 at 15:28
Ask yourself this, were you redirected or not (like in inception) ? you need to know what you are getting is a redirect (aka dreamworld) or direct page(or reality). It is your totem ;) — user568109, May 22 '13 at 15:38

score 3 · Answer 4 · answered Jul 20 '21 at 14:10

If you use axios, you can fetch the redirected url like below,

 axios({
        method: 'GET',
        url: URL,
        params: {
        }
    })
        .then((response) => {
            return response.request._redirectable._options.href;
        })
        .catch(error => {
            return error;
        });

score 0 · Answer 5 · edited Dec 31 '18 at 17:30

0

You can use the function form for followRedirect (rather than followAllRedirects), like this:

options.followRedirect = function(response) {
  var url = require('url');
  var from = response.request.href;
  var to = url.resolve(response.headers.location, response.request.href);
  return true;
};

request(options, function(error, response, body) {
  // normal code
});

edited Dec 31 '18 at 17:30

Timothy J. Aveni

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answered Sep 24 '15 at 15:13

Flimm

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How do I get the redirected url from the nodejs request module?

5 Answers5

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