We are planning to enable automatic redirect following in all REST API [1] HTML entry points on April 25th. When responding to a request for a redirected title [2], the response headers will contain:
Status: 302 Location: <path-to-redirect-target>
For most clients, this means that their HTTP client will automatically follow redirects, simplifying common use cases. The few clients with a need to retrieve the redirect page content itself have two options:
1) Disable following redirects in the client. For HTML and data-parsoid entry points, the response still includes the HTML body & regular response headers like the ETag.
2) Send a `?redirect=false` query string parameter. This option is recommended for browsers, which lack control over redirect behavior for historical security reasons.
If you do have a need to avoid following redirects, you can make these changes before the feature is enabled. Internally, we have already done so for VisualEditor and the Mobile Content Service. See also https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T118548 for background & related discussion.
Let us know if you have any concerns or questions about this.
Thanks,
Gabriel Wicke for the Wikimedia Services Team
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/?doc (using en.wikipedia.org as an example) [2]: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Redirects