Get Redirect URL with cURL

By  on  

URL redirects can be glorious or annoying depending on which side of them you are on and which side you want to be on.  Redirects are helpful for vanity URLs (useful in advertising) but sometimes they're annoying in that they could potentially break your code if you encounter a redirect you weren't anticipating.

The useful and amazing cURL command line utility allows you to fetch an address and return its final destination URL:

# "/css" doesn't exist but WordPress tries to find the closest match
# and then redirects to it ("/css-animation-callback")

curl -Ls -w %{url_effective} -o /dev/null https://davidwalsh.name/css

# Outputs: https://davidwalsh.name/css-animation-callback

The url_effective variable is what we're after.  The L directive tells cURL to follow redirects, the s directive tells cURL to be silent (i.e. not output the page contents).  You provide the URL, cURL follows it to its endpoint -- easy!

Recent Features

  • By
    Responsive and Infinitely Scalable JS Animations

    Back in late 2012 it was not easy to find open source projects using requestAnimationFrame() - this is the hook that allows Javascript code to synchronize with a web browser's native paint loop. Animations using this method can run at 60 fps and deliver fantastic...

  • By
    LightFace:  Facebook Lightbox for MooTools

    One of the web components I've always loved has been Facebook's modal dialog.  This "lightbox" isn't like others:  no dark overlay, no obnoxious animating to size, and it doesn't try to do "too much."  With Facebook's dialog in mind, I've created LightFace:  a Facebook lightbox...

Incredible Demos

Discussion

  1. J-K. Solbakken

    Follow a URL using JavaScript: https://www.npmjs.com/package/linkfollower

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!