Follow URL Redirects with Node.js

By  on  

URL shorteners are a dime a dozen these days, and it is quite nice to have a pretty URL instead of a mile long string, but there are some downsides to URL shorteners:  they can mask dangerous URLs and getting to the endpoint can be slow, since you end up making multiple requests.  And what if a shortener sold out to a porn company?!  Whoa!

A while back I wrote a post about following URLs from command line with cURL.  Since I love JavaScript and Node.js is in full flight, I want to show you linkfollower, a Node.js utility for following URL redirects and getting the final landing URL.

Start by installing linkfollower:

yarn add linkfollower
# or `npm install linkfollower`

With linkfollower installed globally, we can use the follow command to follow the series of redirects until the final URL:

# follow {url}
follow http://davidwalsh.name/css

# RESULT:
# http://davidwalsh.name/css -> 301
# https://davidwalsh.name/css -> 301
# https://davidwalsh.name/css-animation-callback -> 200

URL shorteners can be likened to a blindfold -- the promise of going one place but possible end up in another.  Using linkfollower is a good practice if you care to be secure with links.

Recent Features

  • By
    9 Mind-Blowing WebGL Demos

    As much as developers now loathe Flash, we're still playing a bit of catch up to natively duplicate the animation capabilities that Adobe's old technology provided us.  Of course we have canvas, an awesome technology, one which I highlighted 9 mind-blowing demos.  Another technology available...

  • By
    Facebook Open Graph META Tags

    It's no secret that Facebook has become a major traffic driver for all types of websites.  Nowadays even large corporations steer consumers toward their Facebook pages instead of the corporate websites directly.  And of course there are Facebook "Like" and "Recommend" widgets on every website.  One...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    9 Mind-Blowing Canvas Demos

    The <canvas> element has been a revelation for the visual experts among our ranks.  Canvas provides the means for incredible and efficient animations with the added bonus of no Flash; these developers can flash their awesome JavaScript skills instead.  Here are nine unbelievable canvas demos that...

  • By
    5 More HTML5 APIs You Didn&#8217;t Know Existed

    The HTML5 revolution has provided us some awesome JavaScript and HTML APIs.  Some are APIs we knew we've needed for years, others are cutting edge mobile and desktop helpers.  Regardless of API strength or purpose, anything to help us better do our job is a...

Discussion

  1. The request module (https://github.com/request/request) also does this very nicely with followRedirect parameter (maxRedirects is also another handy parameter to deal with loops).

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