Redirects

Route target redirect

You can set up one route to redirect to another route within your app or even to another absolute URL in your config/routes.js.

module.exports.routes = {
  '/chat': '/community',
  'GET /docs': 'https://docs.sailscasts.com'
}

INFO

Learn more about Route target redirect on the Sails docs.

Exit signal redirect

You can also set an exit to signal a redirect in your action.

module.exports = {
  exits: {
    success: {
      responseType: 'redirect'
    }
  },
  fn: async function (inputs) {
    return '/'
  }
}

Notice we set the responseType to redirect and then we can return a URL string.

INFO

Learn more about Actions and Controllers on the Sails docs.

Preserving URL fragments

When redirecting from one Inertia page to another, the browser normally does not send the URL fragment to the server. If you are redirecting a deep link, call sails.inertia.preserveFragment() before returning the redirect URL.

module.exports = {
  exits: {
    success: {
      responseType: 'redirect'
    }
  },
  fn: async function () {
    const article = await Article.findOne({ slug: this.req.param('slug') })

    sails.inertia.preserveFragment()
    return `/articles/${article.canonicalSlug}`
  }
}

If the visit started at /articles/old-slug#comments, Inertia can carry the fragment to /articles/new-slug#comments.

303 response code for SPAs

When redirecting after a PUT, PATCH, or DELETE request from your SPA, you must use a 303 response code, otherwise the subsequent request will not be treated as a GET request. A 303 redirect is very similar to a 302 redirect; however, the follow-up request is explicitly changed to a GET request.

The Boring Stack provides you with the inertiaRedirect custom response to do that in your controller actions:

module.exports = {
  exits: {
    success: {
      responseType: 'inertiaRedirect'
    }
  },
  fn: async function (inputs) {
    return '/users'
  }
}

INFO

Learn more about 303 response code on the Inertia docs.

External redirects

Sometimes it's necessary to redirect to an external website, or even another page in your app that's not an SPA. This can be accomplished using a server-side initiated window.location visit via the inertiaRedirect custom response.

module.exports = {
  exits: {
    success: {
      responseType: 'inertiaRedirect'
    }
  },
  fn: async function (inputs) {
    return 'https://sailsjs.com'
  }
}

The inertiaRedirect custom response will generate a 409 Conflict response if the redirect request is coming from a POST or GET method and include the destination URL in the X-Inertia-Location header. When this response is received client-side, Inertia will automatically perform a window.location = url visit.