Express: Handling redirects

Join the AI Workshop to learn more about AI and how it can be applied to web development. Next cohort February 1st, 2026

The AI-first Web Development BOOTCAMP cohort starts February 24th, 2026. 10 weeks of intensive training and hands-on projects.


Redirects are common in Web Development. You can create a redirect using the Response.redirect() method:

res.redirect('/go-there')

This creates a 302 redirect.

A 301 redirect is made in this way:

res.redirect(301, '/go-there')

You can specify an absolute path (/go-there), an absolute url (https://anothersite.com), a relative path (go-there) or use the .. to go back one level:

res.redirect('../go-there')
res.redirect('..')

You can also redirect back to the Referer HTTP header value (defaulting to / if not set) using

res.redirect('back')

Lessons in this unit:

0: Introduction
1: Introduction to Express
2: Request parameters
3: Send a response to the client
4: Send a JSON response
5: Manage cookies
6: Work with HTTP headers
7: ▶︎ Handling redirects
8: Routing
9: Template engines
10: Middleware
11: Serving Static Assets with Express
12: Send files to the client
13: Sessions
14: Validating and sanitizing input
15: Handling form data
16: Handling CORS
17: HTTPS with a self-signed certificate
18: HTTPS with Let's Encrypt
19: Handling file uploads
20: Build a REST API with MongoDB