Next.js

Redirects, Rewrites & Headers

28 min Lesson 49 of 80

Redirects, Rewrites & Headers

This lesson expands the Next.js path with an advanced topic from the official Next.js documentation. The goal is not only to memorize an option or file name, but to understand its impact on rendering, caching, security, and deployment.

After this lesson you should be able to apply the topic in a real project, choose the right boundary for it, and explain it as a reviewable engineering decision.

Core Concepts

permanent redirects
temporary redirects
rewrites
security headers
runtime redirects

Practical Example

// next.config.ts
import type { NextConfig } from 'next'

const nextConfig: NextConfig = {
  async redirects() {
    return [{ source: '/old-blog/:slug', destination: '/blog/:slug', permanent: true }]
  },
  async rewrites() {
    return [{ source: '/docs/:path*', destination: '/knowledge/:path*' }]
  },
  async headers() {
    return [{ source: '/(.*)', headers: [{ key: 'X-Frame-Options', value: 'DENY' }] }]
  },
}

export default nextConfig

This lesson is aligned with these official Next.js documentation areas: next.config redirects, rewrites, and headers docs.

Why It Matters

In production applications, this topic affects page speed, data freshness, authorization clarity, and operational reliability after deployment.

Implementation Workflow

Decide whether the data is public or user-specific.
Choose the smallest part of the tree that needs this behavior.
Connect the example to a real route and add a small verification check.
Document the effect on caching and deployment.

Hands-on Practice

Plan a blog URL migration with permanent redirects and a small docs rewrite.

Use redirects for canonical URL changes; rewrites do not tell search engines a page moved.

Summary

Judge the implementation by how clear the decision is, whether the behavior is correct after build, and how easily it can be traced in production.