Automatic region-based redirect on website

Implementing Automatic Region Redirect on Website

Automatic redirect by region — logical follow-up to GeoIP detection. User opens site.ru, system detects their city and redirects to site.ru/spb/ or spb.site.ru. Simple task but has sharp corners: redirect loops, bots, overseas users, CDN caching.

Basic Redirect Logic

// app/Http/Controllers/RegionRedirectController.php
class RegionRedirectController
{
    public function __invoke(Request $request): RedirectResponse|Response
    {
        // Bots and search engines — don't redirect, they crawl specific URLs
        if ($this->isCrawler($request->userAgent())) {
            return app(HomeController::class)->index($request);
        }

        // If user already chose region — respect choice
        if ($preferred = $request->cookie('region')) {
            return $this->redirectToRegion($preferred, $request);
        }

        // GeoIP detection
        $geo    = app(GeoIpService::class)->lookupCached($request->ip());
        $region = $this->matchRegion($geo['city'], $geo['region_name'], $geo['country_code']);

        // Redirect 302 (not 301 — region can change)
        return $this->redirectToRegion($region->slug, $request)
            ->withCookie(cookie('region', $region->slug, 60 * 24 * 30)); // 30 days
    }

    private function redirectToRegion(string $slug, Request $request): RedirectResponse
    {
        $path = $request->getPathInfo(); // '/' on homepage
        return redirect("/{$slug}{$path}", 302);
    }

    private function isCrawler(?string $ua): bool
    {
        if (!$ua) return false;
        $bots = ['Googlebot', 'bingbot', 'YandexBot', 'Baiduspider',
                 'DuckDuckBot', 'Slurp', 'facebookexternalhit'];
        foreach ($bots as $bot) {
            if (str_contains($ua, $bot)) return true;
        }
        return false;
    }
}

Protection from Redirect Loops

Most common mistake — redirect triggers on already regional URLs. Middleware protects:

// app/Http/Middleware/SkipRegionRedirect.php
public function handle(Request $request, Closure $next): Response
{
    // URL already contains region slug — skip
    $regions  = Region::pluck('slug')->toArray();
    $firstSeg = explode('/', trim($request->getPathInfo(), '/'))[0] ?? '';

    if (in_array($firstSeg, $regions, true)) {
        return $next($request);
    }

    // Root URL — perform redirect
    return app(RegionRedirectController::class)($request);
}

Applied only to root route:

Route::get('/', RegionRedirectController::class)
    ->middleware(SkipRegionRedirect::class);

Matching City to Region

GeoIP returns city name in English — need to match with internal slug:

private function matchRegion(
    ?string $city,
    ?string $region,
    ?string $country
): Region
{
    // First by city
    if ($city) {
        $match = RegionGeoMapping::where('city_en', $city)->first();
        if ($match) return $match->region;
    }

    // By region/oblast
    if ($region) {
        $match = RegionGeoMapping::where('region_en', $region)->first();
        if ($match) return $match->region;
    }

    // By country — base region for country
    if ($country) {
        $match = Region::where('country_code', $country)
            ->where('is_country_default', true)
            ->first();
        if ($match) return $match;
    }

    // Global default
    return Region::where('is_default', true)->firstOrFail();
}

Mapping table:

CREATE TABLE region_geo_mappings (
    id         SERIAL PRIMARY KEY,
    region_id  INTEGER REFERENCES regions(id),
    city_en    VARCHAR(255),   -- 'Saint Petersburg'
    region_en  VARCHAR(255),   -- 'Saint Petersburg'
    country    CHAR(2)         -- 'RU'
);

Region Change Button

User must be able to change auto-detected region. On change — update cookie:

// AJAX endpoint
Route::post('/set-region/{slug}', function (string $slug, Request $request) {
    abort_unless(Region::where('slug', $slug)->exists(), 404);

    $redirectTo = $request->input('redirect_to', "/{$slug}/");

    return response()->json(['redirect' => $redirectTo])
        ->withCookie(cookie('region', $slug, 60 * 24 * 365)); // 1 year
});

Frontend — on click region in header or popup:

async function setRegion(slug) {
    const res = await fetch(`/set-region/${slug}`, {
        method: 'POST',
        headers: { 'X-CSRF-TOKEN': document.querySelector('meta[name=csrf-token]').content },
        body: JSON.stringify({ redirect_to: `/${slug}/` })
    });
    const { redirect } = await res.json();
    window.location.href = redirect;
}

CDN and Caching

CDN (Cloudflare, Fastly) caches pages. If CDN caches root /, all users get same redirect — the one cached first. Solutions:

Option A: exclude / from CDN cache (Cache-Control: no-store on root URL).

Option B: use Cloudflare Workers for redirect on edge:

// Cloudflare Worker
addEventListener('fetch', event => {
    event.respondWith(handleRequest(event.request));
});

async function handleRequest(request) {
    const url    = new URL(request.url);
    const cookie = request.headers.get('Cookie') || '';
    const region = cookie.match(/region=([a-z]+)/)?.[1];

    if (url.pathname === '/' && !region) {
        const country = request.cf?.country || 'RU';
        const slug    = countryToRegion[country] || 'msk';
        return Response.redirect(`${url.origin}/${slug}/`, 302);
    }
    return fetch(request);
}

Option C: redirect on client via JS — simplest but user sees flicker.

Behavior for Overseas Users

If GeoIP returns country not in regions list — need decision:

• Show popup "Select region" without auto-redirect
• Redirect to default region with popup "You from another country?"
• Redirect to separate page site.ru/international/

Decision depends on overseas users share in audience.

Debugging

For testing redirects from different IPs, convenient query parameter in dev:

if (app()->isLocal() && $testIp = $request->query('test_ip')) {
    $geo = app(GeoIpService::class)->lookup($testIp);
}

https://site.dev/?test_ip=77.109.0.1 — simulates user with specific IP.