redirect

One project I'm working on needed a Behat test added to test whether a particular redirection works properly. Basically, I wanted to test for the following:

1. An anonymous user accesses a file at a URL like http://www.example.com/pictures/test.jpg
2. The anonymous user is redirected to the path http://www.example.com/sites/default/files/pictures/test.jpg

Since the site uses Apache, I added the actual redirect to the site's .htaccess file in the docroot, using the following Rewrite configuration:

Testing with curl --head, I could see that the proper headers were set—Location was set to the correct redirected URL, and the response gave a 301. So now I had to add the Behat test.

There are some simple Drupal modules that help with login redirection (especially Login Destination), but I often need more advanced conditions applied to redirects, so I like being able to do the redirect inside a custom module. You can also do something similar with Rules, but if the site you're working on doesn't have Rules enabled, all you need to do is:

1. Implement hook_user_login().
2. Override $_GET['destination'].

The following example shows how to redirect a user logging in from the 'example' page to the home page (Drupal uses <front> to signify the home page):