htmx, redirect after request

On a site using htmx I had the need of redirecting to the homepage (/) after I did a network DELETE request to the server.

A first implementation I did involved client-side redirect by listening to the htmx:afterRequest event.

The event happened after clicking a button with id button-delete-project, so I used this code:

<script>
  document.addEventListener('htmx:afterRequest', 
    function (event) {
    if ((event as CustomEvent).detail.target.id === 
      'button-delete-project') {
       window.location.href = '/'
    }
  })
</script>

An alternative approach, the one I decided to go for, involved setting a custom htmx header in the server response.

After deleting an item, I set the HX-Redirect HTTP header to /.

Using an Astro route, I used this code:

if (Astro.request.method === 'DELETE') {
  await deleteProject(id)

  return new Response(null, {
    status: 204,
    statusText: 'No Content',
    headers: {
      'HX-Redirect': '/',
    },
  })
}

After doing the HTTP request, htmx automatically redirects to that URL, client-side.

You can set a wide variety of custom headers in the response, to do many interesting things like this one, for which you might think you’d have to write custom code, but it’s all built-in for you.