gatsby-plugin-netlify

This plugin adds support for Gatsby SSR and DSG on Netlify, and handles Gatsby redirects and headers.

The plugin works by automatically generating a _headers and _redirects file at the root of the public folder to configure HTTP headers and redirects on Netlify.

By default, the plugin will add some basic security headers. You can easily add or replace headers through the plugin config.

When not to use the plugin: In case you just want to use your own _redirects or _headers file for Netlify with Gatsby, you don't need this plugin. Instead, move those files in /static/_redirects, /static/_headers and Gatsby will copy them to your root folder during build where Netlify will pick them up. Note that this plugin is still required if you want to use SSR or DSG rendering.

Install

npm install gatsby-plugin-netlify

How to use

Add gatsby-plugin-netlify to your gatsby-config:

module.exports = {
  plugins: [`gatsby-plugin-netlify`]
}

Configuration

If you just need the critical assets, you don't need to add any additional config. However, if you want to add headers, remove default headers, or transform the given headers, you can use the following configuration options:

module.exports = {
  plugins: [
    {
      resolve: `gatsby-plugin-netlify`,
      options: {
        headers: {}, // option to add more headers. `Link` headers are transformed by the below criteria
        allPageHeaders: [], // option to add headers for all pages. `Link` headers are transformed by the below criteria
        mergeSecurityHeaders: true, // boolean to turn off the default security headers
        mergeCachingHeaders: true, // boolean to turn off the default caching headers
        transformHeaders: (headers, path) => headers, // optional transform for manipulating headers under each path (e.g.sorting), etc.
        generateMatchPathRewrites: true, // boolean to turn off automatic creation of redirect rules for client only paths
      },
    },
  ]
}

Headers

The headers object represents a JS version of the Netlify _headers file format. You should pass in an object with string keys (representing the paths) and an array of strings for each header.

An example:

{
  options: {
    headers: {
      "/*": [
        "Basic-Auth: someuser:somepassword anotheruser:anotherpassword",
      ],
      "/my-page": [
        // matching headers (by type) are replaced by Netlify with more specific routes
        "Basic-Auth: differentuser:differentpassword",
      ],
    },
  }
}

Link paths are specially handled by this plugin. Since most files are processed and cache-busted through Gatsby (with a file hash), the plugin will transform any base file names to the hashed variants. If the file is not hashed, it will ensure the path is valid relative to the output public folder. You should be able to reference assets imported through javascript in the static folder.

Do not specify the public path in the config, as the plugin will provide it for you.

The Netlify _headers file does not inherit headers, and it will replace any matching headers it finds in more specific routes. For example, if you add a link to the root wildcard path (/*), it will be replaced by any more specific path. If you want a resource to put linked across the site, you will have to add to every path. To make this easier, the plugin provides the allPageHeaders option to inject the same headers on every path.

{
  options: {
    allPageHeaders: [
      "Link: </static/my-logo.png>; rel=preload; as=image",
    ],
    headers: {
      "/*": [
        "Basic-Auth: someuser:somepassword anotheruser:anotherpassword",
      ],
    },
  }
}

You can validate the _headers config through the Netlify playground app.

Redirects

You can create redirects using the createRedirect action.

In addition to the options provided by the Gatsby API, you can pass these options specific to this plugin:

Attribute	Description
force	Overrides existing content in the path. This is particularly useful for domain alias redirects. See the Netlify documentation for this option.
statusCode	Overrides the HTTP status code which is set to 302 by default or 301 when isPermanent is true. Since Netlify supports custom status codes, you can set one here. For example, 200 for rewrites, or 404 for a custom error page. See the Netlify documentation for this option.

An example:

exports.createPages = ({ actions }) => {
  const { createRedirect } = actions

  createRedirect({ fromPath: '/old-url', toPath: '/new-url', isPermanent: true })
  createRedirect({ fromPath: '/url', toPath: '/zn-CH/url', Language: 'zn' })
  createRedirect({
    fromPath: '/url_that_is/not_pretty',
    toPath: '/pretty/url',
    statusCode: 200,
  })
}

You can also create a _redirects file in the static folder for the same effect. Any programmatically created redirects will be appended to the file.

# my manually set redirects
/home              /
/blog/my-post.php  /blog/my-post

You can validate the _redirects config through the Netlify playground app.

Redirect rules are automatically added for client only paths. The plugin uses the matchPath syntax to match all possible requests in the range of your client-side routes and serves the HTML file for the client-side route. Without it, only the exact route of the client-side route works.

If those rules are conflicting with custom rules or if you want to have more control over them you can disable them in configuration by setting generateMatchPathRewrites to false.