A simple Node function to dereference a URL, to find out what it points to through redirects.

derefurl.js

const request = require ("request");

function derefUrl (url, callback) {
	var theRequest = {
		method: "HEAD", 
		url: url, 
		followAllRedirects: true
		};
	request (theRequest, function (err, response) {
		if (err) {
			callback (err);
			}
		else {
			callback (undefined, response.request.href);
			}
		});
	}

derefUrl ("http://www.scripting.com/rss.xml", function (err, urlDeref) {
	console.log (urlDeref);
	});

Very cool!

I wrote something similar in PHP a while ago. (99% just cURL) https://tim.hithlonde.com/2016/get-final-url-after-redirects/

Now I kind of want a library of just this kind of function in all the various languages out there. :)