How Can I Make the Go HTTP Client NOT Follow Redirects Automatically?

I'm currently writing some software in Go that interacts with a REST API. The REST API endpoint I'm trying to query returns an HTTP 302 redirect along with an HTTP Location header, pointing to a resource URI.

I'm trying to use my Go script to grab the HTTP Location header for later processing.

Here's what I'm currently doing to achieve this functionality:

package main

import (
        "errors"
        "fmt"
        "io/ioutil"
        "net/http"
)

var BASE_URL = "https://api.example.com/v1"
var STORMPATH_API_KEY_ID = "xxx"
var STORMPATH_API_KEY_SECRET = "xxx"

func noRedirect(req *http.Request, via []*http.Request) error {
        return errors.New("Don't redirect!")
}

func main() {

        client := &http.Client{
            CheckRedirect: noRedirect
        }
        req, err := http.NewRequest("GET", BASE_URL+"/tenants/current", nil)
        req.SetBasicAuth(EXAMPLE_API_KEY_ID, EXAMPLE_API_KEY_SECRET)

        resp, err := client.Do(req)

        // If we get here, it means one of two things: either this http request
        // actually failed, or we got an http redirect response, and should process it.
        if err != nil {
            if resp.StatusCode == 302 {
                fmt.Println("got redirect")
            } else {
                panic("HTTP request failed.")
            }
        }
        defer resp.Body.Close()

}

This feels like a bit of a hack to me. By overriding the http.Client's CheckRedirect function, I'm essentially forced to treat HTTP redirects like errors (which they aren't).

I've seen several other places suggesting to use an HTTP transport instead of an HTTP client -- but I'm not sure how to make this work since I need the HTTP Client as I need to use HTTP Basic Auth to communicate with this REST API.

Can any of you tell me a way to make HTTP requests with Basic Authentication -- while not following redirects -- that doesn't involve throwing errors and error handling?

There's a much simpler solution right now:

client := &http.Client{
	CheckRedirect: func(req *http.Request, via []*http.Request) error {
		return http.ErrUseLastResponse
	},
}

This way, the http package automatically knows: "Ah, I shouldn't follow any redirects", but does not throw any error. From the comment in the source code:

> As a special case, if CheckRedirect returns ErrUseLastResponse,
> then the most recent response is returned with its body
> unclosed, along with a nil error.

Another option, using the client itself, without the RoundTrip:

<!-- language: lang-go -->

// create a custom error to know if a redirect happened
var RedirectAttemptedError = errors.New("redirect")
 
client := &http.Client{}
// return the error, so client won't attempt redirects
client.CheckRedirect = func(req *http.Request, via []*http.Request) error {
		return RedirectAttemptedError
}
// Work with the client...
resp, err := client.Head(urlToAccess)
	
// test if we got the custom error
if urlError, ok := err.(*url.Error); ok && urlError.Err == RedirectAttemptedError{
		err = nil	
}

UPDATE: this solution is for go < 1.7

It is possible, but the solution inverts the problem a little. Here's a sample written up as a golang test.

package redirects

import (
	"github.com/codegangsta/martini-contrib/auth"
	"github.com/go-martini/martini"
	"net/http"
	"net/http/httptest"
	"testing"
)

func TestBasicAuthRedirect(t *testing.T) {
	// Start a test server
	server := setupBasicAuthServer()
	defer server.Close()

	// Set up the HTTP request
	req, err := http.NewRequest("GET", server.URL+"/redirect", nil)
	req.SetBasicAuth("username", "password")
	if err != nil {
		t.Fatal(err)
	}

	transport := http.Transport{}
	resp, err := transport.RoundTrip(req)
	if err != nil {
		t.Fatal(err)
	}
    // Check if you received the status codes you expect. There may
    // status codes other than 200 which are acceptable.
	if resp.StatusCode != 200 && resp.StatusCode != 302 {
		t.Fatal("Failed with status", resp.Status)
	}

	t.Log(resp.Header.Get("Location"))
}


// Create an HTTP server that protects a URL using Basic Auth
func setupBasicAuthServer() *httptest.Server {
	m := martini.Classic()
	m.Use(auth.Basic("username", "password"))
	m.Get("/ping", func() string { return "pong" })
	m.Get("/redirect", func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
		http.Redirect(w, r, "/ping", 302)
	})
	server := httptest.NewServer(m)
    return server
}

You should be able to put the above code into it's own package called "redirects" and run it after fetching the required dependencies using

mkdir redirects
cd redirects
# Add the above code to a file with an _test.go suffix
go get github.com/codegangsta/martini-contrib/auth
go get github.com/go-martini/martini
go test -v

Hope this helps!

To make request with Basic Auth that does not follow redirect use RoundTrip function that accepts *Request

This code

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "io/ioutil"
    "net/http"
    "os"
)

func main() {
    var DefaultTransport http.RoundTripper = &http.Transport{}

    req, _ := http.NewRequest("GET", "http://httpbin.org/headers", nil)
    req.SetBasicAuth("user", "password")

    resp, _ := DefaultTransport.RoundTrip(req)
    defer resp.Body.Close()
    contents, err := ioutil.ReadAll(resp.Body)
    if err != nil {
        fmt.Printf("%s", err)
        os.Exit(1)
    }
    fmt.Printf("%s\n", string(contents))
}

outputs

{
  "headers": {
    "Accept-Encoding": "gzip", 
    "Authorization": "Basic dXNlcjpwYXNzd29yZA==", 
    "Connection": "close", 
    "Host": "httpbin.org", 
    "User-Agent": "Go 1.1 package http", 
    "X-Request-Id": "45b512f1-22e9-4e49-8acb-2f017e0a4e35"
  }
}

As an addition of top rated answer,

You can control the particle size

func myCheckRedirect(req *http.Request, via []*http.Request, times int) error {
	err := fmt.Errorf("redirect policy: stopped after %d times", times)
	if len(via) >= times {
		return err
	}
	return nil
}

...

	client := &http.Client{
		CheckRedirect: func(req *http.Request, via []*http.Request) error {
			return myCheckRedirect(req, via, 1)
		},
	}

ref: https://golangbyexample.com/http-no-redirect-client-golang/