kumina / redirectory

A simple app to easily create redirects.

Redirectory - redirect with ease

This is a simple script that allows Apache to read a database with a mod_python script to determine where a certain domain should redirect to. The database is a simple SQLite database.

This project consists of two parts, the Apache script and vhost config and the web.py application to ease the input of data. Both can be run separately, but the SQLite database from the web.py script should then be copied over to the Apache webserver. Using the web.py script is optional, if you prefer to manually enter data (or write your own app for it) into SQLite, you're welcome, of course.

Database schema

CREATE TABLE redirects (
	gid INTEGER PRIMARY KEY ASC,
	domain TEXT,
	ordering INTEGER,
	path TEXT,
	dest TEXT
);

CREATE INDEX domain_in_redirects ON redirects (domain);

• gid is just a global id, should be MAX(gid)+1
• domain is the domain for which this rule counts, something like example.com
• ordering is an integer denoting the order in which the paths should be matched, first one that matches, wins
• path is the URI to match on, should always start with a /
• dest is the destination to which a client should be redirected

Execution workflow

This should help in debugging:

1. Open the sqlite database
2. Get all records for the requested domain out of the database, sorted by the ordering column, ascending.

• If the URL start with www., that part is removed
• If there are no records, redirect to the default entry

1. If there's just one record, immediately redirect to that destination, without checking path, script ends here
2. Interpret each path as a regex and match it to the requested path

• If a match is found, redirect to the associated destination, script ends here

1. On the last record, always redirect to the associated path, script ends here

Things to keep in mind

• It's never necessary to add both example.com and www.example.com in the database, the www. variant is automatically assumed as well. (The www. part is actually removed from the requested URL before checking.)
• An entry with domain "default" should be entered which contains a default destination for unmatched domains.
• The domains are case-insensitive, but the paths aren't. Also, there's currently no way to quickly make a check case-insensitive (as with the i option in normal regex), so if case is expected to be important, you need to use the [aA][bB] trick.
• Redirects are always of the permanent kind (301).

Notes

• ordering is used because order is a reserved keyword in sqlite and I couldn't come up with anything better.