IPIP-0386: Subdomain Gateway Interop with _redirects

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1. Summary

This IPIP provides a detailed clarification on the interoperability between the Path and Subdomain Gateway. Specifically, it ensures that features such as [web-redirects-file] are executed only AFTER a redirect to a subdomain has taken place.

2. Motivation

When hosting a modern Single Page Application on IPFS, one wants to use native URLs to share the app with other users, e.g. ipns://example.org/cool/feature. On traditional hosting, deep links are redirected or rewritten to a single entry point, e.g. /index.html, and the router on the client side evaluates the path segments to render the correct content.

The _redirects file, defined in [web-redirects-file], supports such applications when a Subdomain Gateway is used directly. However, the current resolution of native URLs uses a Path Gateway link scheme and subsequently fails to resolve the URL correctly.

For example:

NOTE: The kubo (<0.20) gateway returns a 404 including a new Location header already pointing to the correct subdomain URL. But browsers do not follow the header as the status is 404, and the response contains a text/plain body string.

When using a Subdomain Gateway on the proper host, the path can be resolved using the _redirects file:

3. Detailed design

This IPIP suggests the following resolution steps for DNSLink names, CIDs should be resolved similarly:

A Subdomain Gateway that provides interoperability with Path-Gateway-style URLs should redirect to a Subdomain-Gateway-style URL first and then try to resolve a given path. This allows the usage of a potential _redirects file in the root.

This change subsequently fixes the resolution of native URLs in browsers using the companion extension and browsers like Brave.

A paragraph is added to the [subdomain-gateway] spec that describes the preservation of path segments and query parameters during the interop redirect. Furthermore, it specifies that gateway implementations should redirect to subdomain URLs if a resource is initially not found in the directory identified by the CID or DNSLink name.

4. Test fixtures

The example from the [web-redirects-file] can be re-used, QmYBhLYDwVFvxos9h8CGU2ibaY66QNgv8hpfewxaQrPiZj.

$ ipfs ls /ipfs/QmYBhLYDwVFvxos9h8CGU2ibaY66QNgv8hpfewxaQrPiZj
Qmd9GD7Bauh6N2ZLfNnYS3b7QVAijbud83b8GE8LPMNBBP 7   404.html
QmSmR9NShZ89VEBrn9SBy7Xxvjw8Qe6XArD5GqtHvbtBM3 7   410.html
QmVQqj9oZig9tH3ENHo4bxV5pNgssUwFCXUjAJAVcZVbJG 7   451.html
QmZU3kboiyi9jV59D8Mw8wzuvsr3HmvskqhYRRhdFA8wRq 317 _redirects
QmaWDLb4gnJcJbT1Df5X3j91ysiwkkyxw6329NLiC1KMDR -   articles/
QmS6ZNKE9s8fsHoEnArsZXnzMWijKddhXXDsAev8LdTT5z 9   index.html
QmNwEgMrExwSsE8DCjZjahYfHUfkSWRhtqSkQUh4Fk3udD 7   one.html
QmVe2GcTbEPZkMbjVoQ9YieVGKCHmuHMcJ2kbSCzuBKh2s -   redirected-splat/
QmUGVnZaofnd5nEDvT2bxcFck7rHyJRbpXkh9znjrJNV92 7   two.html

The _redirects file is as follows.

$ ipfs cat /ipfs/QmYBhLYDwVFvxos9h8CGU2ibaY66QNgv8hpfewxaQrPiZj/_redirects
/redirect-one /one.html
/301-redirect-one /one.html 301
/302-redirect-two /two.html 302
/200-index /index.html 200
/posts/:year/:month/:day/:title /articles/:year/:month/:day/:title 301
/splat/* /redirected-splat/:splat 301
/not-found/* /404.html 404
/gone/* /410.html 410
/unavail/* /451.html 451
/* /index.html 200

Following redirects should occur:

$ curl -v http://{gateway}/ipfs/QmYBhLYDwVFvxos9h8CGU2ibaY66QNgv8hpfewxaQrPiZj/redirect-one
...
&lt; HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
&lt; Location: http://bafybeiesjgoros75o5meijhfvnxmy7kzkynhqijlzmypw3nry6nvsjqkzy.ipfs.{gateway}/redirect-one
...

Subsequent requests should comply with [ipip-0002].

5. Design rationale

Gateways like kubo (before v0.20) already support the _redirect and subdomain redirect, but block the redirect chain by returning a 404 when a resource is not found on the Path Gateway. By moving the 404 to occur at the subdomain, users get another chance to find the resources they are looking for.

5.1 User benefit

Currently, users are presented with an error message when they request a resource on a Path Gateway intended for a Subdomain Gateway. Since a given gateway would redirect on a valid resource anyway, redirecting to the subdomain URL on a potentially invalid resource would improve usability and compatibility.

5.2 Compatibility

This proposal fixes a bug in handling of _redirects files.

The current behavior is defined in [path-gateway]. The 404 return code indicates that a resource does not exist. Changing this to a 301 redirect that is subsequently answered with a 404 from the subdomain URL is a breaking change, but the old behavior should be considered as a bug.

Requesting an existing resource on the Path Gateway URL in kubo already returns a 301 redirect: client expectation is for the behavior to be the same for invalid paths.

5.3 Security

Security should not be compromised as the resource is not delivered from the Path Gateway URL but from the subsequent subdomain URL that offers improved security due to host separation.

5.4 Alternatives

Gateways could continue to return a 404 response for the non-existing resource, but also include an HTML body containing a redirect link. This would help users to find the requested site, but comes with worse UX than the fix proposed in this IPIP.

A. References

[ipip-0002]
IPIP-0002: _redirects File Support on Web Gateways. Justin Johnson; Marcin Rataj; Henrique Dias. 2022-06-15. URL: https://specs.ipfs.tech/ipips/ipip-0002/
[path-gateway]
Path Gateway Specification. Marcin Rataj; Adrian Lanzafame; Vasco Santos; Oli Evans; Henrique Dias. 2023-03-30. URL: https://specs.ipfs.tech/http-gateways/path-gateway/
[subdomain-gateway]
Subdomain Gateway Specification. Marcin Rataj; Adrian Lanzafame; Vasco Santos; Oli Evans; Thibault Meunier; Steve Loeppky. 2023-01-28. URL: https://specs.ipfs.tech/http-gateways/subdomain-gateway/
[web-redirects-file]
Web _redirects File Specification. Justin Johnson; Marcin Rataj. 2023-01-28. URL: https://specs.ipfs.tech/http-gateways/web-redirects-file/