How can I redirect facebook crawler bot to another webpage?

user_2555911 0
Viewed 760

I've developed small website done by PreactJS which has some parts of main website (PHP). As we all know, Facebook bot cannot crawl javascript pre-render content while sharing. That's why I want to redirect as letting facebook bot to crawl main website (PHP) while sharing a link of website done by PreactJS in NodeJS/ExpressJS as follow:

if user is sharing like, 'https://www.mywebsite.com/category/trips/10' I want nodejs/express to redirect 'https://main.mywebsite.com/category/trips/10'. Can anyone tell me how can I do like that in expressjs level as follow:

app.use('/*', function(req, res){
  if(req.headers['user-agent'] === 'facebookexternalhit/1.1') {

  }
});
preact reactjs express node.js facebook
2 Answers

Instead of redirecting, I strongly recommend proxying that data. Otherwise, Facebook is going to assume that your URL is a redirect for regular users as well.

Consider a module like express-http-proxy, which makes this simple. Untested, but this should get you started:

app.use((req, res, next) => {
  if (
    !req.headers['user-agent'] ||
    !req.headers['user-agent'].startsWith('facebookexternalhit')
  ) {
    return next();
  }

  return proxy('main.mywebsite.com')(req, res);
});
user_3625360 
app.use('/*', function(req, res){
  if(req.headers['user-agent'] === 'facebookexternalhit/1.1') {
   res.redirect("https://main.mywebsite.com/category/trips/10")
  }
});

You can use res.render() if you want to redirect it to a view you have created

user_79420500
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