How to capture HTTP redirections using Puppeteer

[liamj]

I’m working with Puppeteer and need to track HTTP redirections that happen during page navigation. My goal is to capture both the redirect chain and the response content when redirects occur.

I’ve written some code to listen for responses, but I’m stuck on how to detect and capture the actual redirect information. Here’s what I have so far:

const tab = await browser.newPage();

tab.on('request', (req) => console.log(req));

await tab.on('response', res => {
    const pageUrl = res.url();
    res.buffer()
    .then(
        data => {
            const content = data.toString();
        },
        err => {
            console.log(err);
        }
    );
});

await tab.goto('https://www.example.com', {waitUntil: 'networkidle0'});

The current setup captures responses but doesn’t give me information about redirects. Is there a specific method or event in Puppeteer that can help me track the redirect chain? Any suggestions would be helpful.

[mikezhang]

I hit the same problem building a monitoring tool. Puppeteer already tracks redirects during navigation - you don’t need to listen to response events. Just grab the redirect info from the final response object after navigation wraps up. The response object has the whole redirect chain through its request method. Here’s what worked for me: save the initial URL before calling goto, then compare it with the final page URL when navigation’s done. Use page.url() and cross-reference with the response chain to get the redirect history. Your current approach might miss some redirects since they happen at the browser level, not individual requests. Try page.on('framenavigated') to catch navigation changes that include redirect data.

[jess_brown]

yo, check the response status codes (301 or 302) while handling them. also, try using response.request().redirectChain() to get the full redirect chain, it helps a lot without needing extra events. good luck!

[sophiac]

You can improve this by checking the response status and using the redirect chain method. Check if res.status() returns redirect codes like 301, 302, or 307. Then use res.request().redirectChain() - it gives you an array of all previous requests in the redirect sequence. I’ve found it helpful to store both the original URL and final destination. If you need more control, enable request interception with await tab.setRequestInterception(true). This lets you modify or analyze requests before they finish. Watch out though - some redirects happen client-side through JavaScript instead of HTTP headers. You might need to combine this with monitoring navigation events for full coverage.