在重定向之前，为丢失的资源传递正确的HTTP状态代码

Question

This is a theoretical problem. Let's say I have a public user profile page:

mypage.com/users/1

Before the route /users/{id} is accessed, I check whether the user (so, the resource) exists. If not, I redirect to homepage:

$user = User::find($id);

if (!isset($user)) {
    return Redirect::to('/');
}

Now, when a user does not exist, the network tab of Chrome dev tools returns 302 Found status and then the redirect to homepage takes place.

Is this the correct status to be set? If not, what kind of code should I pass to the redirect to provide information of a missing resource? I don't think it should be 404 , as the route itself might be correct (like /users/12242343534657 ), so - technically - the page might exist. It's just the data that is being requested - doesn't.

What is your experience with this issue?

Answer 1

All redirects have to use a 3xx status code. Here's a list of them

In your case that would probably be 302 (or 301, but this will be permanently cached by the browser which could become a problem)

However, should you really redirect to the homepage? I think no. Of course that's just my opinion, but it's really common practice to show a 404 page. (Which doesn't just stand for a wrong route but Not found in general)

There are scenarios where redirecting can hurt the user experience. Imagine you manually entered the address of your site like:

example.com/usr/lukasgeiter

As you might have noticed, I wrote user wrong. With a redirect I'd have to type everything again. If you stay on the site and display an error message I can correct my spelling error and load the correct page.

Also it's much more clear to the user what happend that way. Obviously you can put a big link to home on the error page so the user knows what to do next ;)