Option to accept 301 redirects

[tiagoporto]

301 redirects are good to keep old URLs working.

An option to validate 301 redirects and confirm the final URL is not a dead link would be beneficial, preventing the issuance of a warning.

Currently, a warning is thrown:

warning Unexpected redirecting URL `https://app.com/latest/`, expected final URL `https://app.com/v1.0.0/` no-dead-urls remark-lint

The only way to avoid the warning is to change the URL to https://app.com/v1.0.0/, but the URL is going to change after every new release, forcing the URL to be changed every time.

[wooorm]

Hey! 301 and 308 are considered permanent redirects. All other redirects are not.
So, you should be getting that back in the result! https://github.com/wooorm/dead-or-alive#result

This is used in the lint rule you mention: https://github.com/remarkjs/remark-lint-no-dead-urls/blob/2690abc6cbcf23007424092f66c3e402d82a50f7/lib/index.js#L173.

Given that your apps redirect is not permanent, perhaps your app should use 302, 307? https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9110#name-302-found

[tiagoporto]

Hi @wooorm

Given that your apps redirect is not permanent, perhaps your app should use 302, 307? https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9110#name-302-found

Using Github pages, I don't have permission to make these changes. Do you know if there is a way to ignore the 301 redirect, to avoid the permanent check?

[wooorm]

Hmm, no.
But this sounds more like something you’d want to ignore based on domain. So, you could configure the lint rule to ignore this URL?

[tiagoporto]

So, you could configure the lint rule to ignore this URL?

I don't want to ignore it; I would like to keep using the original URL and make sure that even if it has a 301 redirect, the URL is alive. Because, in the future, the end URL could be changed again, and in this case, it's not going to be necessary to go through all the docs changing URLs again.

I understand the logic, checking if it is a permanent redirect and forcing a replacement by the end URL, but it could be useful if the initial URL is accepted too.

WDYT? Maybe I can help with this feature.

[wooorm]

Yes, help would be awesome!

But, I think you are asking for an option to accept all 301s. And, well, that has problems, because many servers are configured properly, and do use 301 for 301s. I am unsure you should use such an option.

Message ignores can ignore different categories of messages. However, the idea of lint rules is to only emit one message category. So that doesn’t fly.

We could have a similar option to skipUrlPatterns, but to ignore permanent requests? 🤷‍♂️ skipPermanentRedirectPatterns?

[tiagoporto]

Hi @wooorm,

I was thinking more about it.

Something like skipRedirectUrls may work well.

Message ignores can ignore different categories of messages. However, the idea of lint rules is to only emit one message category. So that doesn’t fly.

Let me try to explain with an example, and after that, we can try to elaborate on this subject.

Given the URL https://app.com/latest/ redirects to https://app.com/v1.0.0.

Current remark-lint implementation

Even if both URLs are alive

Warn because of the redirect

warning Unexpected redirecting URL `https://app.com/latest/`, expected final URL `https://app.com/v1.0.0/` no-dead-urls remark-lint

New feature idea

{
  "skipRedirectUrls": true
}

skipRedirectUrls could accept 301 and 302, or granular options:

{
  "skipRedirectUrls": {
    "301": true,
    "302": true
  }
}

Both URLs are alive

no issues found

Initial URL is dead

warning Unexpected dead URL `https://app.com/latest/`, expected live URL no-dead-urls remark-lint

Redirected URL is dead

warning Unexpected dead URL `https://app.com/v1.0.0/` redirect from `https://app.com/latest/`, expected live URL no-dead-urls remark-lint

WDYT? Also, should this feature be added on no-dead-urls?