Best approach to redirect an URL using REST

Question

Can anyone suggest me which is the best approach to redirect an URL using REST among the below two ways:

1. httpResponse.sendRedirect("URL");
2. Response.temporaryRedirect(new URI("path"));

Answer 1

There are many forms of redirect. The 3xx family of HTTP status codes contains:

• 301 Moved Permanently
• 307 Temporary Redirect

These and the other codes have different semantic. Which is right depends on your situation. Have the resources been permanently been moved to a new location? Or is the redirect only temporary?

Answer 2

There are several types of redirects

According to the RFC 7231, the current reference for the semantics and content of the HTTP/1.1, there are several types of redirects. They are all

1. Redirects that indicate the resource might be available at a different URI, as provided by the Location field, as in the status codes 301 (Moved Permanently), 302 (Found), and 307 (Temporary Redirect).

2. Redirection that offers a choice of matching resources, each capable of representing the original request target, as in the 300 (Multiple Choices) status code.

3. Redirection to a different resource, identified by the Location field, that can represent an indirect response to the request, as in the 303 (See Other) status code.

4. Redirection to a previously cached result, as in the 304 (Not Modified) status code.

The correct one depend on your needs. However, these are the most commons:

6.4.2. 301 Moved Permanently

The 301 (Moved Permanently) status code indicates that the target resource has been assigned a new permanent URI and any future references to this resource ought to use one of the enclosed URIs. [...]

6.4.4. 303 See Other

The 303 (See Other) status code indicates that the server is redirecting the user agent to a different resource, as indicated by a URI in the Location header field, which is intended to provide an indirect response to the original request. [...]

6.4.7. 307 Temporary Redirect

The 307 (Temporary Redirect) status code indicates that the target resource resides temporarily under a different URI and the user agent MUST NOT change the request method if it performs an automatic redirection to that URI. [...]

Performing the redirects in JAX-RS

By the code you posted in the question, I believe you are using the JAX-RS API. If so, you can perform the redirects as following:

• 301 Moved Permanently:

URI uri = ...
return Response.status(Status.MOVED_PERMANENTLY).location(uri).build();

• 303 See Other (aka POST/redirect/GET):

URI uri = ...
return Response.seeOther(uri).build();

• 307 Temporary Redirect:

URI uri = ...
return Response.temporaryRedirect(uri).build();

For more details, the Response class documentation may be useful.

Other details that can be useful when using JAX-RS

You also can inject the UriInfo in your REST endpoints:

@Context
UriInfo uriInfo;

And get some useful information, such as the base URI and the absolute path of the request. It will be useful when building the URI for redirection.

A resource method with redirection will be like:

@Path("/foo")
public class MyEndpoint {

    @Context
    private UriInfo uriInfo;

    @POST
    @Produces(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON)
    public Response myMethod() {
        URI uri = uriInfo.getBaseUriBuilder().path("bar").build();
        return Response.temporaryRedirect(uri).build();
    }
}