eleventy-plugin-redirects

Because cool URIs don't change!

Automatically generates Vercel- or Netlify-friendly redirects files (or client-side redirects if you prefer) from aliases defined in frontmatter.

All redirects are 301 Moved Permanently; this plugin does not support 302 Moved Temporarily.

---

Adding the plugin

Install with npm or yarn:

npm install eleventy-plugin-redirects

yarn add eleventy-plugin-redirects

Add the plugin into your .eleventy.js config. Pass in the options object with the redirects template you want (permitted values are netlify, vercel or clientSide).

const redirectsPlugin = require('eleventy-plugin-redirects');

module.exports = function(eleventyConfig) {
  config.addPlugin(redirectsPlugin, {
    template: 'netlify'; // netlify, vercel or clientSide
  })
}

Defining redirects

Define redirects in the frontmatter for your pages with the aliases key, and this plugin will add them to a redirects collection.

---
title: My lovely blog post
aliases:
- /2022/02/my-lovely-blog-post
---

You can have multiple aliases!

---
title: Blog
aliases:
- /posts
- /writing
---

Creating a redirects file

Netlify/Vercel

Warning: if you already have a vercel.json file, this plugin will not work and may overwrite your existing config. Don't use this plugin if you already have vercel.json config.

Create a redirects.njk file in the same directory as your index page (it can be called anything, really, as long as it's in the right place). This file will call the redirects shortcode with collections.redirects. If you're using a different template engine, create a file with the appropriate extension.

The frontmatter should contain a permalink key, which will be:

• permalink: /_redirects for Netlify, or
• permalink: /vercel.json for Vercel.

You'll also want to add eleventyExcludeFromCollections: true to stop your redirects page being added to Eleventy's collections.

Example _redirects.njk for Netlify:

---
permalink: /_redirects 
eleventyExcludeFromCollections: true
---
{% redirects %}

Client-side redirects

A bit more work is involved to get this set up, but this will generate an index.html file for each alias which has a meta tag pointing to the new location.

Paginate the redirects

We'll use a Javascript template, so that we can take advantage of computed values. Create the file redirects.11ty.js in the same directory as all your other pages. Paste in the following:

class Redirects {
  data() {
    return {
      pagination: {
        data: 'collections.redirects',
        size: 1,
        alias: 'redirect',
        addAllPagesToCollections: true,
      },
      tags: 'page',
      layout: 'redirects.njk',
      eleventyComputed: {
        permalink: ({ redirect }) => `${redirect.from}/index.html`,
      },
      eleventyExcludeFromCollections: true,
    };
  }

  render() {
    return null;
  }
}

module.exports = Redirects;

NB If you keep your layouts in a subfolder of _includes, you'll need to change the layout: 'redirects.njk' value to include the subfolder.

This tells Eleventy to paginate the collections.redirects collection (which the plugin creates for you), creating a subdirectory with an index.html page for each one.

Create the template file

Create a redirects.njk file where you keep your layouts (if you're using a different template engine, create a file with the appropriate extension). Call the redirects shortcode with redirect (the data we paginated).

{% redirects redirect %}

Build your own template

The plugin generates a collection called redirects which has two values:

• from - the alias you want to redirect from
• to - the URL you are redirecting to
• title - the title of the page

You can use this collection in a template by accessing collections.redirects and iterating through the contents.

---

Author

Sophie Koonin - localghost.dev / @type__error