Version 1.9.3:

• Fixed REGEP BINARY query error with MySQL 8.

Version 1.9.2:

• Fixed URLs and links for Joomla! 3.9.x.

Version 1.9.1:

• Fixed an issue with seterror function;
• Added support for https to custom error page of type link.

Version 1.9.0:

• Added macros {camelcase} and {ucwords};
• Added support for Joomla! Update System.

Version 1.8.3:

• Fixed an issue with empty function (return value in write context);
• Added an option to apply a rule only in case of error (sponsored by damago gmbH).

Version 1.8.2:

• Fixed an issue with shortcut extensions.

Version 1.8.1:

• Fixed an issue with exception handler for Joomla 3.6.0;
• Improved error management.

Version 1.8.0:

• Fixed an issue with exception handler;
• Changed some code for PHP 7 compatibility.

Version 1.7.10:

• Fixed and issue with exception handler.

Version 1.7.9 (only for J3):

• Fixed an issue with pagination;
• Fixed an issue with {requestvar};
• Added macro {placeholder_insert} (only for Enterprise);
• Added macro {placeholder_update} (only for Enterprise).

Version 1.7.8:

• Fixed an issue with filter in search tools on errors and redirects;
• Improved route_url() function;
• Fixed an issue with drop_query_vars() function.

Version 1.7.7:

• Fixed code for PHP 5.5 deprecated preg_replace /e modifier;
• Fixed issue with {queryvar} macro;
• Fixed issue with {substr} macro;
• Added macro {pathfolder} (only for Enterprise).

Version 1.7.6:

• Fixed an issue with exceptions management (call_user_func and variable passed by reference).

Version 1.7.5:

• Added macros {urlencode} and {urldecode};
• Improved function sanitizeURL for UTF-8 support when multibyte library is missing;
• Added a redirect URL for each error URL;
• Added a clean function for errors which saves errors with a redirect attached (unlike the purge function);
• Fixed an issue with {username} and {userid} macros;
• Added macros {rawurldecode} and {rawurlencode};
• Added macro {str_replace};
• Removed a wrong check on document type inside onAfterInitialise;
• Added skip_usergroups feature to skip rules for specified groups of users (only for Enterprise);
• Added macro {placeholder_select} (only for Enterprise).

Version 1.7.4:

• Changed the interface to support new filters and ordering (only for J3);
• Fixed an issue related to changes of JUri behavior (only for J3);
• Fixed an issue of compatibility of plugin with PHP 5.2.

Version 1.7.3:

• Fixed an issue with rule search filter;
• Fixed an issue with errors search filter, pages 404 and referers (only for J3);
• Fixed an issue on the custom error page (when the option is enabled but page is not selected);
• Improved macro {routeurl} for the unwanted variables removal;
• Improved function to manage redirect of all errors;
• Improved interface to manage errors and referers;
• Added new URL macros {queryappend}, {querybuildappend}, and {querydropappend};
• Added new site macros {username}, {userid};
• Added new string macros {lowercase}, {uppercase};
• Added rule condition to skip redirect;
• Added button to reset statistics (hits and last visit);
• Fixed an issue in the package related to plugin uninstall.

Version 1.7.2:

• Improved trim text function;
• Improved queryfull macro;
• Added "shortcut extensions" option to plugin;
• Created installation package;
• First release for Joomla 3.0.

Version 1.7.1:

• Fixed issue with custom error page;
• Added combobox selection for the custom error page.

Version 1.7.0:

• Added support for placeholders and comments for redirection rules;
• Added support for new macros for redirection rules.

Version 1.6.2:

• Replaced TYPE=MyISAM with ENGINE=MyISAM;
• Fixed issue with $basepath related to "/" encoded with %2F;
• Fixed issue with creation of exclude referers list;
• Hidden warning messages on preg_match macro (@preg_match) (only for Enterprise);
• Hidden notice message "Notice: Undefined offset: 0:" on array_key_exists (only for Enterprise);
• Replaced urlencode(<string>) with urlencode(utf8_encode(<string>)) (only for Enterprise);
• Replaced urldecode(<string>) with utf8_decode(urldecode(<string>)) (only for Enterprise).

Version 1.6.0:

• Completely rewritten for the new version of Joomla! 1.6 and 1.7;
• The redirection rules can work on the entire URL, including protocol and domain;
• It can be specified for each redirect rule whether or not to first decode the URL.

To create a redirection rule go to menu "Components" -> "ReDJ" –> "Redirects", and click on “New” button. A form will be shown to entering redirection information related to the rule.

The "From URL" field must contains an "URL part" to match with any requested URL. If "Request only" is checked, then URL parts "scheme", "user", "pass", "host" and "port" will be ignored, otherwise the full requested URL will be checked. It is also possible to use Regular Expressions in "From URL" field. ReDJ supports regular expressions according to Henry Spencer's implementation:

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/regexp.html

This option makes it possible to create complex patterns to match a bunch of URLs to redirect with just a single redirection rule.

The field "To URL" must contains the destination URL where to redirect the web browser for any requested URL that matches with the current rule. It must specify an absolute URL, starting with the "scheme" part. The "To URL" field can contains macros and placeholders to build the destination dynamically. Each macro or placeholder is evaluated after an URL matches, and its value is replaced to the macro or placeholder itself. Support of regular expressions, macros and placeholders allow to build complex URL trasformations.

The field "Skip" is optional. Like "From URL" it can contains an "URL part" and supports regular expressions, but its purpose is just the opposite. It allows to specify a condition to skip the rule and its redirect when the condition is satisfied.

The field "Skip user groups" works only for ReDJ Enterprise, and allows to select one or more user groups which skip the rule (i.e. the redirection will not be applied).

The "Redirect" field indicates the redirection type to use. There are three options available:

• 301 (Moved Permanently)
• 307 (Temporary Redirect)
• 200 (Internal Redirect)

The Internal Redirect option is available only for ReDJ Enterprise, and allows to change the destination page returned to web browser "internally" to Joomla, on the server side. This means that the user stays on the same URL and cannot notice any changes in the address bar. The Internal Redirect option can be selected also in ReDJ Community, but in this case a standard 301 redirect will be used instead.

About the meanings of other fields:

• Case sensitive: specifies if the match between "From URL" and the requested URL must consider the letters case (i.e. uppercase and lowercase are considered different). If case sensitive is checked, the rule must match with requested URL also for case of characters. If case sensitive is unchecked, no matter if rule and requested URL differ only for case of characters (i.e. MyPage.php = myPage.PHP = mypage.php).
• Request only: as stated before, this field is used to specify if only the request part or the whole URL must be considered of the requested URL.
• Decode URL: the requested URLs come on the server always encoded (i.e. special chars are replaced by % chars). If this field is unchecked the URL is compared with the rule as is. If the field is checked, the requested URL is first decoded and then checked if matches with the rule.
• Placeholders: can contains a list of placehoders (one per row). A placeholder is like a variable that can assume a value based on any string, macros and other placeholders (defined before).
• Comment: allows to add a memo note to each redirection rule.

The statistics fields provide useful information about rule usage. The "Hits" counts the number of times the rule were used, and the "Last visit" indicates the last time the rule were applied.

In the example showed in the image above, the source and the destination are:

From URL: ^/test.html
To URL: http://{siteurl}/

With this settings all the following URLs will be redirected:

http://www.mysite.com/test.html

http://www.mysite.com/test.html?param=xxx

http://www.mysite.com/test_html

While this will not be:

http://www.mysite.com/directory/test.html

This is because in the regular expression ^/test.html the initial caret ^ means "start with", and "request only" is checked, so /directory/test.html will not match. Notice that the URL with /test_html also matches, because the dot means "any char" in the regexp syntax. To specify a literal dot, this should be escaped with \, so the rule should be:

From URL: ^/test\.html

This will match only the first and the second URL of our previous example, but not the third (http://www.mysite.com/test_html).

The destination contains an example of macro, {siteurl}, which will be replaced with www.mysite.com.

As mentioned earlier the "From URL" field can contain a regular expression and can match the whole URL or just a part of it. The following table shows some regexp examples.

The rules ordering is important for matching the source URL. For each URL request, all published rules are compared according to their ordering. Even if two or more rules match, ONLY THE FIRST ONE in the rule ordering will be used. This can be useful, as example, to distinguish a category from its articles. If we have two URLs as follow:

http://www.mysite.com/category/
http://www.mysite.com/category/article-1.html

Rules could be configured with the following "From URL" field:

For http://www.mysite.com/category/article-1.html both rules match this URL, but only the first matching rule is applied so, if rules are configured in the wrong order, the redirect for page article-1.html will never be used.

Internal Redirect

This feature is available only in the Enterprise version of ReDJ. The 301 (Moved Permanently) or 307 (Temporary Redirect) redirects are client-side redirects. The user from his web browser requests a page (the source URL), and the web server responds with the address to which the page was moved (the destination URL). At this point, it is the client browser that makes a new request for the new address (i.e. is the client that performs the redirect).
With the "Internal Redirect" instead, is the web server that changes the page returned to web browser with the new destination. The result is a server-side redirect (i.e. the redirect happens "internally" to Joomla), and the user does not notice any URL change in the address bar. This is a great solution to create URL aliases and short URLs. Just as example, let's consider an existing URL like the following:

http://www.yoursite.com/index.php/component/reservation/event/4/forum

It is possible to create a rule with a redirection type 200 (Internal) that match to the following URL:

http://www.yoursite.com/training

The page content sent to client is exactly the same for both URLs, but the shortest URL is much friendly and better for SEF and SEO.

Dynamic Destinations (Macros and Placeholders)

Let's take a deeper look at "To URL" destination field. Since version 1.5 of ReDJ, a support for complex "macros" has been added, and this allows to create dynamic destinations. The version 1.7.1 introduces support for "placeholders", that adds a new dimension to build complex URL transformations.

When the URL request matches the "From URL" source field of a rule, if the destination field "To URL" contains one or more macros or placeholders, then ReDJ first calculates and replaces any placeholder and macro with its current value, builds the final "real destination" URL, and finally performs the redirect.

Macros allow, as example, to manipulate pieces of the current matching URL (e.g. a query variable), placeholders can define new variables using constant strings, macros and other (previous) placeholders, so both let you to create dynamic destinations as complex transformations of the current source URL.

Here a practical example of dynamic destinations and macro substitution:

Placeholders allow you to define a set of values where each value is associated and identified by a name. A placeholder can be used in the definition of other placeholders or in the definition of meta info (practically they are based on the same principle of the variables in programming languages). Syntax for defining a placeholder is name=value where 'name' is the placeholder identifier (placeholder valid name, like variables in PHP convention, starts with a letter or underscore, followed by any number of letters, numbers, or underscores), while 'value' can be any string, and can also contains macros or placeholders defined before, and both will be replaced with their current value. The syntax to use a placeholder is ${name}, where 'name' is the name of the placeholder. Each rule has a text area field to define any number of placeholders, one for each row. For example, if you enter:

a=this
b=${a} is
c=${b} an
d=${c} example

Putting the placeholder ${d} in a meta field (e.g. title or description), this field will assume the value 'this is an example'. Here is a practical example of how to use the placeholders to get a complex result through the use of available macros in a sequence of definitions. Let's assume we need to create a rule for URL:

http://www.mysite.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=53&Itemid=280

We want to withdraw the article id (53), and perform a look-up on the database for getting the article alias (using-joomla), to be used for example in the page title. We can define the following placeholders:

id={preg_match 1}/option=com_content&view=article&id=([0-9]+)/i{/preg_match}
alias={tableselect #__content,alias,id}${id}{/tableselect}

After this, putting ${alias} in the title field, this will be replaced by 'using-joomla' in the page.

The first thing to do is to enable ReDJ plugin. To enable the plugin go to menu "Extensions" -> "Plug-in Manager", find a system type plugin named "System - ReDJ Community" or "System - ReDJ Enterprise" in the plugin list, and click on it to access to plugin settings. Set "Status" to “Enabled”, and set other parameters on the right side according to your needs. Look at "Plugin settings" paragraph for detailed information about each parameter. Click on "Save & Close" button and check that the plugin is now enabled.

Remember that is the plugin that "does the work". The ReDJ component is just the administrative interface for managing redirection rules an other features, but is the plugin that checks site requests and performs redirection and other actions when needed. So, the very first thing to do is to enable the plugin. Note that if you need to disable ReDJ, just disable the plugin.

Another thing to check is the plugins order that can be very important, especially if there are some other plugins that mess with the source URL, redirection and aliases. In most cases it is better to set ReDJ as the first system plugin, so it will be the first to be executed and to check any page call. Now ReDJ is ready to work! You can now create your first redirection rule, and test the redirection through the web browser. Be careful that you could get a cached page. To avoid this just clear server-side cache from backend (menu "Maintenance" -> "Clean Cache"), and client-side cache from your web browser.

The ErrorDocument directive

Some non-existing URLs are managed directly by Apache that returns the 404 error page.

To manage these URLs with ReDJ and make redirection it is necessary to tell to Apache to pass 404 errors to Joomla (and ReDJ). To do this, it is enough to append this directive at the end of Joomla standard .htaccess file:

ErrorDocument 404 /