Redirect 301 if url title present

Question

Let's say we have a url: http://example.com/section/my-url-title we want to enure that the {url_title} is not used in the URI. We have changed all template tags to point to the {entry_id} instead.

The issue now is we have 600+ url's listed with google. We therefore want a 301 re-direct that checks for a {url_title} and then sends a 301 header with the new URI schema using the {entry_id}

As an example of what we want to achieve, let imagine the URL is http://example.com/section/my-url-title this then re-directs to http://example.com/section/369

We set up as basic template which works as you might expect:

{exp:channel:entries}
   {if '{segment_2}' == '{url_title}'}
      I should re-direct {url_title} | {entry_id} -- <? echo({entry_id}); ?>
   {if:else}
      I should NOT re-direct {url_title} | {entry_id} -- <? echo({entry_id}); ?>
   {/if} 
{/exp:channel:entries}

And as you might expect a request to http://example.com/section/my-url-title outputs this into the template:

I should re-direct my-url-title | 369 -- 369

If we then test the url using the entry ID URI http://example.com/section/369 we get:

I should NOT re-direct my-url-title | 369 -- 369

...so far so good...

We then added the following php within the true part of the if statement:

<?
    Header( "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" );
    Header( "Location: /{segment_1}/{entry_id}" );
    die();
?>

And the template re-directs BUT we get caught in a re-direct loop. This is the same for either URLS:

http://example.com/section/my-url-title http://example.com/section/369

Both get in a re-direct loop.

We have also tried this plugin: http://blog.builtbyprime.com/php/301-redirect-for-expression-engine-2 which also seems to get stuck in a loop and disregard the if statement.

Any help or advice greatly appreciated.

p.s I'd rather avoid the task of remapping every url using googles webmaster tools.

Answer 1

You can't use {if}...{if:else}...{/if} (always executed, output thrown away after conditional check) but have to use switchee or something similiar.

{exp:switchee variable="{segment_2}" parse="inward"}
    {case value="{url_title}"}
        I should re-direct {url_title} | {entry_id} -- <? echo({entry_id}); ?>
    {/case}
    {case default="Yes"}
        I should NOT re-direct {url_title} | {entry_id} -- <? echo({entry_id}); ?>
    {/case}
{/exp:switchee}

switchee docs:

With EEs if/else conditionals, each condition is parsed before being removed at the end of the parsing process. This means if you wrap if/else tags around lots of other tags then your template will be running many unnecessary queries and functions.

As Switchee is a tag we can use parse=“inward” to ensure that unmatched conditions are not parsed before being removed from the template.

Answer 2

A simple embed did the trick, we simply check {if '{segment_2}' == '{url_title}'} and it its true I have an embed that then uses this plugin to redirect: http://blog.builtbyprime.com/php/301-redirect-for-expression-engine-2

Job done :)