Fixing Broken Links With Django's Redirects App

Learn how to use the redirects app in Django to redirect old URLs to new ones, avoiding 404 errors | A guide

in Web Dev

Let's say you make a post about your favorite color.

/red-is-my-favorite-color

Time passes, and you decide red isn't so hot anymore. Now your favorite color is blue. So you change the slug.

/blue-is-my-favorite-color

But now everyone who visits the original link gets a 404. To fix that up, I followed the Django Docs and added the redirects app to my Django project in this commit. as of July 2022, all you have to do is:

  1. Ensure that the django.contrib.sites framework is installed.
  2. Add 'django.contrib.redirects' to your INSTALLED_APPS setting.
  3. Add 'django.contrib.redirects.middleware.RedirectFallbackMiddleware' to your MIDDLEWARE setting.
  4. Run the command manage.py migrate.

Now on your admin page, you can add all the redirects you want

screenshot of redirect page showing /red-is-my-favorite-color redirecting to /blue-is-my-favorite-color

I could add something in signals.py to do this automatically on slug change, but I don't want this behavior to be automagic, and I don't change link slugs very often.

Hope that was useful to you 😁

Comments

Back to Home

Related Posts

John Solly Profile Picture

John Solly

A hands-on AI practitioner who transitioned to a CTO role to broaden my impact.

Most of my career has been dedicated to developing spatial systems at Esri, startups, and federal agencies. Currently, I lead technology strategy for Leidos' Health IT division, supporting agencies such as SSA, VA, and HHS.

My primary focus is the convergence of spatial computing and AI, enabling machines to interpret the physical world and applying these capabilities to meaningful missions.

Please reach out if you are interested in spatial systems or advancing AI within the federal government.