(Optional) Configuring a Webpage Redirect

If your Amazon S3 bucket is configured for website hosting, you can redirect requests for an object to another object in the same bucket or to an external URL.

Topics

Page Redirect Support in the Amazon S3 Console
Setting a Page Redirect from the REST API
Advanced Conditional Redirects

You set the redirect by adding the x-amz-website-redirect-location property to the object metadata. The website then interprets the object as 301 redirect. To redirect a request to another object, you set the redirect location to the key of the target object. To redirect a request to an external URL, you set the redirect location to the URL that you want. For more information about object metadata, see System-Defined Metadata.

A bucket configured for website hosting has both the website endpoint and the REST endpoint. A request for a page that is configured as a 301 redirect has the following possible outcomes, depending on the endpoint of the request:

Region-specific website endpoint – Amazon S3 redirects the page request according to the value of the x-amz-website-redirect-location property.
REST endpoint – Amazon S3 doesn't redirect the page request. It returns the requested object.

For more information about the endpoints, see Key Differences Between the Amazon Website and the REST API Endpoint.

You can set a page redirect from the Amazon S3 console or by using the Amazon S3 REST API.

Page Redirect Support in the Amazon S3 Console

You can use the Amazon S3 console to set the website redirect location in the metadata of the object. When you set a page redirect, you can either keep or delete the source object content. For example, suppose that you have apage1.html object in your bucket. To redirect any requests for this page to another object, page2.html, you can do one of the following:

To keep the content of the page1.html object and only redirect page requests, choose the page1.html object.

Choose the Properties tab for page1.html, and then choose the Metadata box. Add Website Redirect Location to the metadata, as shown in the following example, and set its value to /page2.html. The / prefix in the value is required.

You can also set the value to an external URL, such as http://www.example.com. For example, if your root domain is example.com, and you want to serve requests for both http://example.com and http://www.example.com, you can create two buckets named example.com and www.example.com. Then, maintain the content in one of the buckets (say example.com), and configure the other bucket to redirect all requests to the example.com bucket.
To delete the content of the page1.html object and redirect requests, you can upload a new zero-byte object with the same key, page1.html, to replace the existing object. Then specify Website Redirect Location for page1.html in the upload process. For information about uploading an object, see Uploading S3 Objects in the Amazon Simple Storage Service Console User Guide.

Setting a Page Redirect from the REST API

The following Amazon S3 API actions support the x-amz-website-redirect-location header in the request. Amazon S3 stores the header value in the object metadata as x-amz-website-redirect-location.

When setting a page redirect, you can either keep or delete the object content. For example, suppose you have a page1.html object in your bucket.

To keep the content of page1.html and only redirect page requests, you can submit a PUT Object - Copy request to create a new page1.html object that uses the existing page1.html object as the source. In your request, you set the x-amz-website-redirect-location header. When the request is complete, you have the original page with its content unchanged, but Amazon S3 redirects any requests for the page to the redirect location that you specify.
To delete the content of the page1.html object and redirect requests for the page, you can send a PUT Object request to upload a zero-byte object that has the same object key:page1.html. In the PUT request, you set x-amz-website-redirect-location for page1.html to the new object. When the request is complete, page1.html has no content, and requests are redirected to the location that is specified by x-amz-website-redirect-location.

When you retrieve the object using the GET Object action, along with other object metadata, Amazon S3 returns the x-amz-website-redirect-location header in the response.

Advanced Conditional Redirects

Using advanced redirection rules, you can route requests conditionally according to specific object key names, prefixes in the request, or response codes. For example, suppose that you delete or rename an object in your bucket. You can add a routing rule that redirects the request to another object. If you want to make a folder unavailable, you can add a routing rule to redirect the request to another webpage. You can also add a routing rule to handle error conditions by routing requests that return the error to another domain when the error is processed.

When configuring a bucket for website hosting, you have the option of specifying advanced redirection rules.

Static website hosting screen showing optional redirection
rules

To redirect all requests to the bucket's website endpoint to another host, you only need to provide the host name.

Static website hosting screen with redirect requests
selected

You describe the rules using XML. The following section provides general syntax and examples of specifying redirection rules.

Syntax for Specifying Routing Rules

The following is general syntax for defining the routing rules in a website configuration:

Copy
<RoutingRules> =
    <RoutingRules>
         <RoutingRule>...</RoutingRule>
         [<RoutingRule>...</RoutingRule>   
         ...]
    </RoutingRules>

<RoutingRule> =
   <RoutingRule>
      [ <Condition>...</Condition> ]
      <Redirect>...</Redirect>
   </RoutingRule>

<Condition> =
   <Condition> 
      [ <KeyPrefixEquals>...</KeyPrefixEquals> ]
      [ <HttpErrorCodeReturnedEquals>...</HttpErrorCodeReturnedEquals> ]
   </Condition>
    Note: <Condition> must have at least one child element.

<Redirect> =
   <Redirect> 
      [ <HostName>...</HostName> ]
      [ <Protocol>...</Protocol> ]
      [ <ReplaceKeyPrefixWith>...</ReplaceKeyPrefixWith>  ]
      [ <ReplaceKeyWith>...</ReplaceKeyWith> ]
      [ <HttpRedirectCode>...</HttpRedirectCode> ]
   </Redirect>
    Note: <Redirect> must have at least one child element. 
           Also, you can have either ReplaceKeyPrefix with or ReplaceKeyWith, 
           but not both.

The following table describes the elements in the routing rule.

Name	Description
`RoutingRules`	Container for a collection of `RoutingRule` elements.
`RoutingRule`	A rule that identifies a condition and the redirect that is applied when the condition is met. Condition: A `RoutingRules` container must contain at least one routing rule.
`Condition`	Container for describing a condition that must be met for the specified redirect to be applied. If the routing rule does not include a condition, the rule is applied to all requests.
`KeyPrefixEquals`	The prefix of the object key name from which requests are redirected. `KeyPrefixEquals` is required if `HttpErrorCodeReturnedEquals` is not specified. If both `KeyPrefixEquals` and `HttpErrorCodeReturnedEquals` are specified, both must be true for the condition to be met.
`HttpErrorCodeReturnedEquals`	The HTTP error code that must match for the redirect to apply. If an error occurs, and if the error code meets this value, then the specified redirect applies. `HttpErrorCodeReturnedEquals` is required if `KeyPrefixEquals` is not specified. If both `KeyPrefixEquals` and `HttpErrorCodeReturnedEquals` are specified, both must be true for the condition to be met.
`Redirect`	Container element that provides instructions for redirecting the request. You can redirect requests to another host or another page, or you can specify another protocol to use. A `RoutingRule` must have a `Redirect` element. A `Redirect` element must contain at least one of the following sibling elements: `Protocol`, `HostName`, `ReplaceKeyPrefixWith`, `ReplaceKeyWith`, or `HttpRedirectCode`.
`Protocol`	The protocol, HTTP or HTTPS, to be used in the `Location` header that is returned in the response. If one of its siblings is supplied, `Protocol` is not required.
`HostName`	The host name to be used in the Location header that is returned in the response. If one of its siblings is supplied, `HostName` is not required.
`ReplaceKeyPrefixWith`	The prefix of the object key name that replaces the value of `KeyPrefixEquals` in the redirect request. If one of its siblings is supplied, `ReplaceKeyPrefixWith` is not required. It can be supplied only if `ReplaceKeyWith` is not supplied.
`ReplaceKeyWith`	The object key to be used in the Location header that is returned in the response. If one of its siblings is supplied, `ReplaceKeyWith` is not required. It can be supplied only if `ReplaceKeyPrefixWith` is not supplied.
`HttpRedirectCode`	The HTTP redirect code to be used in the Location header that is returned in the response. If one of its siblings is supplied, `HttpRedirectCode` is not required.

The following examples explain common redirection tasks:

Example 1: Redirect after renaming a key prefix

Suppose that your bucket contains the following objects:

index.html
docs/article1.html
docs/article2.html

You decide to rename the folder from docs/ to documents/. After you make this change, you need to redirect requests for prefix docs/ to documents/. For example, request for docs/article1.html will be redirected to documents/article1.html.

In this case, you add the following routing rule to the website configuration:

Copy
  <RoutingRules>
    <RoutingRule>
    <Condition>
      <KeyPrefixEquals>docs/</KeyPrefixEquals>
    </Condition>
    <Redirect>
      <ReplaceKeyPrefixWith>documents/</ReplaceKeyPrefixWith>
    </Redirect>
    </RoutingRule>
  </RoutingRules>

Example 2: Redirect requests for a deleted folder to a page

Suppose that you delete the images/ folder (that is, you delete all objects with the key prefix images/). You can add a routing rule that redirects requests for any object with the key prefix images/ to a page named folderdeleted.html.

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  <RoutingRules>
    <RoutingRule>
    <Condition>
       <KeyPrefixEquals>images/</KeyPrefixEquals>
    </Condition>
    <Redirect>
      <ReplaceKeyWith>folderdeleted.html</ReplaceKeyWith>
    </Redirect>
    </RoutingRule>
  </RoutingRules>

Example 3: Redirect for an HTTP error

Suppose that when a requested object is not found, you want to redirect requests to an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instance. Add a redirection rule so that when an HTTP status code 404 (Not Found) is returned, the site visitor is redirected to an Amazon EC2 instance that handles the request. The following example also inserts the object key prefix report-404/ in the redirect. For example, if you request a page ExamplePage.html and it results in an HTTP 404 error, the request is redirected to a page report-404/ExamplePage.html on the specified Amazon EC2 instance. If there is no routing rule and the HTTP error 404 occurs, the error document that is specified in the configuration is returned.

Copy
  <RoutingRules>
    <RoutingRule>
    <Condition>
      <HttpErrorCodeReturnedEquals>404</HttpErrorCodeReturnedEquals >
    </Condition>
    <Redirect>
      <HostName>ec2-11-22-333-44.compute-1.amazonaws.com</HostName>
      <ReplaceKeyPrefixWith>report-404/</ReplaceKeyPrefixWith>
    </Redirect>
    </RoutingRule>
  </RoutingRules>

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