Introduction
In PHP, redirecting is easy with the header() function. We will look at:
- How to redirect to a URL
- How to specify the response status code
- Common mistakes
Example of PHP redirect
There are two common types of redirects:
- 301 Moved Permanently - Good when you are retiring an old URL
- 302 Found/Moved Temporarily - Good for temporary redirects and pages that are expected to redirect to different locations
This example redirect to a relative URL of / but it
could be a full URL like https://www.devdungeon.com/.
NOTE, this is done by setting an HTTP header. HTTP headers
must go at the beginning before any content is returned to the client,
so you cannot set a redirect somewhere at the bottom of an HTML file after
the close of a </body> tag. It must be done before the first line of <html> is even sent.
If you don't, you will get the error message headers already sent.
If you do not specify a status code, redirects default to 302 Found/Temporarily moved.
<?php
// Simplest example. Defaults to 302
header('Location: /');
// Or specify explicit status code
//header('Location: /', TRUE, 301);
//header('Location: /', TRUE, 302);
exit; // If you want to ensure nothing else gets output
Conclusion
After reading this you should:
- Be able to perform simple redirects with PHP
- Understand some of the common mistakes
- Know how to specify the redirect status code