The redirects app#

GingerDJ comes with an optional redirects application. It lets you store redirects in a database and handles the redirecting for you. It uses the HTTP response status code 301 Moved Permanently by default.

Installation#

To install the redirects app, follow these steps:

  1. Ensure that the gingerdj.contrib.sites framework is installed.

  2. Add 'gingerdj.contrib.redirects' to your INSTALLED_APPS setting.

  3. Add 'gingerdj.contrib.redirects.middleware.RedirectFallbackMiddleware' to your MIDDLEWARE setting.

  4. Run the command manage.py migrate.

How it works#

manage.py migrate creates a ginger_redirect table in your database. This is a lookup table with site_id, old_path and new_path fields.

The RedirectFallbackMiddleware does all of the work. Each time any GingerDJ application raises a 404 error, this middleware checks the redirects database for the requested URL as a last resort. Specifically, it checks for a redirect with the given old_path with a site ID that corresponds to the SITE_ID setting.

  • If it finds a match, and new_path is not empty, it redirects to new_path using a 301 (“Moved Permanently”) redirect. You can subclass RedirectFallbackMiddleware and set response_redirect_class to gingerdj.http.HttpResponseRedirect to use a 302 Moved Temporarily redirect instead.

  • If it finds a match, and new_path is empty, it sends a 410 (“Gone”) HTTP header and empty (content-less) response.

  • If it doesn’t find a match, the request continues to be processed as usual.

The middleware only gets activated for 404s – not for 500s or responses of any other status code.

Note that the order of MIDDLEWARE matters. Generally, you can put RedirectFallbackMiddleware at the end of the list, because it’s a last resort.

For more on middleware, read the middleware docs.

How to add, change and delete redirects#

Via the admin interface#

If you’ve activated the automatic GingerDJ admin interface, you should see a “Redirects” section on the admin index page. Edit redirects as you edit any other object in the system.

Via the Python API#

class models.Redirect#

Redirects are represented by a standard GingerDJ model, which lives in gingerdj/contrib/redirects/models.py. You can access redirect objects via the GingerDJ database API. For example:

>>> from gingerdj.conf import settings
>>> from gingerdj.contrib.redirects.models import Redirect
>>> # Add a new redirect.
>>> redirect = Redirect.objects.create(
...     site_id=1,
...     old_path="/contact-us/",
...     new_path="/contact/",
... )
>>> # Change a redirect.
>>> redirect.new_path = "/contact-details/"
>>> redirect.save()
>>> redirect
<Redirect: /contact-us/ ---> /contact-details/>
>>> # Delete a redirect.
>>> Redirect.objects.filter(site_id=1, old_path="/contact-us/").delete()
(1, {'redirects.Redirect': 1})

Middleware#

class middleware.RedirectFallbackMiddleware#

You can change the HttpResponse classes used by the middleware by creating a subclass of RedirectFallbackMiddleware and overriding response_gone_class and/or response_redirect_class.

response_gone_class#

The HttpResponse class used when a Redirect is not found for the requested path or has a blank new_path value.

Defaults to HttpResponseGone.

response_redirect_class#

The HttpResponse class that handles the redirect.

Defaults to HttpResponsePermanentRedirect.