The redirects app

    To install the redirects app, follow these steps:

    1. Ensure that the django.contrib.sites framework is installed.
    2. Add 'django.contrib.redirects' to your setting.
    3. Add 'django.contrib.redirects.middleware.RedirectFallbackMiddleware' to your MIDDLEWARE setting.

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

    The does all of the work. Each time any Django 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 and set response_redirect_class to 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 at the end of the list, because it’s a last resort.

    If you’ve activated the automatic Django 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

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

    class middleware.RedirectFallbackMiddleware

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