Fight Link Rot with Server- and Client-side Redirects (Netlify and Gatsby)
Tags: gatsby, netlify, redirects
Published: 2019-07-22 15:55:15

--- 
layout: post
title: Fight Link Rot with Server- and Client-side Redirects (Netlify and Gatsby)
published: true
description: Why you need redirects on clientside and serverside and how to set that up with Gatsby and Netlify
tags: gatsby, netlify, redirects
cover_image: https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1549916028-5fe07973a5c5?ixlib=rb-1.2.1&ixid=eyJhcHBfaWQiOjEyMDd9&auto=format&fit=crop&w=1489&q=80
--- 


Links break. Here's how to fight [link rot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_rot) on your site with redirects.

## Why you need server-side redirects

URL architectures change all the time as the needs of a site grows. What starts out as `/my-post` can become `@swyx/my-post` or `posts/my-post` or `news/2019/my-post` in future.

Consider the user experience. Imagine you're doing some deep research and after hours of scrounging through the back pages of your Google results, you find [a link to something which could solve all your problems](http://oh-no-broken-link.netlify.com). You click it, and the site is still up, but all you see is a 404 page! If the content is still up, hopefully the site has a search function to find it, or Google indexes it. A minor annoyance, sure, but one you as a responsible webmaster could avoid for your users. 

The principle of "Don't Break the Web" becomes even more pressing considering automated workflows like [social media unfurls](https://medium.com/slack-developer-blog/everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-unfurling-but-were-afraid-to-ask-or-how-to-make-your-e64b4bb9254) and Email/RSS/site scrapers will simply break.

At the most basic form, you will want to redirect from URL A to URL B:

```
/my-broken-url   ->  /posts/my-new-url
```

The way this is typically done is by setting up a [.htaccess](http://www.htaccess-guide.com/) file or [server redirect](https://expressjs.com/en/4x/api.html#res.redirect).

One-to-one redirection is very customizable, however may fail to scale for large groups of posts that you may need to redirect.

Netlify offers more powerful redirect configuration with [Netlify Redirects](https://www.netlify.com/docs/redirects/?utm_source=blog&utm_medium=devto&utm_campaign=devex). You can use [placeholders](https://www.netlify.com/docs/redirects/?utm_source=blog&utm_medium=devto&utm_campaign=devex#placeholders) to declaratively rearrange URLs. You can [proxy serverless functions](https://www.netlify.com/docs/redirects/?utm_source=blog&utm_medium=devto&utm_campaign=devex#rewrites-and-proxying). You can use [cookie-based language redirects](https://www.netlify.com/docs/redirects/?utm_source=blog&utm_medium=devto&utm_campaign=devex#geoip-and-language-based-redirects). My favorite, partly because it is fun to say, is [the splat feature](https://www.netlify.com/docs/redirects/?utm_source=blog&utm_medium=devto&utm_campaign=devex#splats):

```
/posts/*  /news/:splat
```

Which is kind of like [the spread operator](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Operators/Spread_syntax) of URLs. 

Search engine indexes will update accordingly as your redirects get visited.

However, in the age of modern Single Page Apps, this isn't the full story.

## Why you need client-side redirects

Server-side redirects take care of **inter-site linking**: the case of **other** sites navigating into your site on a broken link. 

Client-side redirects address the case of **intra-site linking**: when your own site links to other pages in your site, rendered via JavaScript so it doesn't refresh via the server, and the link breaks.

Single Page Apps use [client-side routing](https://codeburst.io/client-side-routing-done-right-3464275778bf) in order to avoid a full page refresh (which I recently learned [isn't always faster](https://carter.sande.duodecima.technology/javascript-page-navigation/)! TIL). This has two primary implications for link rot.

The first and simplest case is that a basic Single Page App, like one set up by `create-react-app`, can actually not need a long list of complex server-side redirects. Just setting up [a simple Single Page App catchall](https://www.netlify.com/docs/redirects/?utm_source=blog&utm_medium=csstricks&utm_campaign=devex#history-pushstate-and-single-page-apps) and letting clientside routing handle everything means we can also set up redirects only on the clientside. All JavaScript frameworks support this, from [React Router](https://github.com/ReactTraining/react-router/blob/master/packages/react-router/docs/api/Redirect.md) to [Vue Router](https://router.vuejs.org/guide/essentials/redirect-and-alias.html). This allows us to manage our redirects (old routes) in the same codebase/location as our routing (current routes).

One drawback of this approach is that the process of resolving the page upon a full page refresh is rather roundabout. First you hit `/my-old-url`, which the server then serves the client bundle for `/`, which then parses and renders on the clientside, which then reads `/my-old-url`, which then redirects to `/posts/my-new-url`.

The second implication of client-side routing for link rot is that modern JavaScript static site generators like Gatsby face a hybrid problem where the bundles for each statically generated page must do client-side routing, however we do not want to configure server-side catchalls (in the simple Single Page App way) or we will lose the whole benefit of using a static site generator in the first place.

It is extraordinarily easy to set up client-side redirects with Gatsby, as [`createRedirect`](https://www.gatsbyjs.org/docs/actions/#createRedirect) is a first-class API. This is made easier by several plugins like [gatsby-plugin-client-side-redirect](https://www.gatsbyjs.org/packages/gatsby-plugin-client-side-redirect/) or [gatsby-redirect-from](https://www.gatsbyjs.org/packages/gatsby-redirect-from/) which all make the redirects slightly easier to write. There are even hacky [redirect plugins using meta tags](https://www.gatsbyjs.org/packages/gatsby-plugin-meta-redirect/?=redirect) and for [serving Gatsby on an Express server](https://www.gatsbyjs.org/packages/gatsby-plugin-express/?=redirect).

## Flash of NotFound Content

The drawback of using SSG with client-side redirects and no server-side redirects is that you will first render the not-found page first until the JavaScript loads and takes over. Leading to the dreaded **Flash of NotFound Content** (kidding, I made it up):

![](https://thepracticaldev.s3.amazonaws.com/i/f0abqrjbvzb2fh0we4jv.gif)

## Using both Server-side and Client-side redirects

Ostensibly, the solution here is to set up parallel server-side and client-side redirects. You may wish to [autogenerate the .htaccess file](https://www.gatsbyjs.org/packages/gatsby-plugin-htaccess-redirects/?=redirect) if you are using an Apache server, or use [Netlify Redirects](https://www.netlify.com/docs/redirects/?utm_source=blog&utm_medium=devto&utm_campaign=devex) to set up a parallel implementation of redirects. 

You might even write a tool to output these redirects automatically... 🤔