Generating _redirects in 11ty

Today I updated an article that is about automatically switching Node.js version with nvm. In the course of this I wanted to delete two old articles and bring them to the current article via an HTTP redirect.

As I host my blog on Netlify, all I need is a _redirects file with the redirects:

/old-url/    /new-url/
/old-url-2/    /new-url/

At first I wanted to create this by hand, but then I came across an article by Aleksandr and now I generate the file automatically. The great thing is: I can specify in my articles, which pages should link to the respective article.

The _redirects file is generated out of my template file redirects.njk:

---
permalink: /_redirects
eleventyExcludeFromCollections: true
---
{%- for page in collections.all -%}
    {%- if page.url and page.data.redirectFrom -%}
        {%- for oldUrl in page.data.redirectFrom %}
{{ oldUrl }}    {{ page.url }}
        {%- endfor -%}
    {%- endif -%}
{%- endfor -%}

To get the _redirects file mentioned above I define redirectFrom in the front matter of my new article

redirectFrom:
  - /old-url/
  - /old-url-2/

I enjoy using 11ty and it is great how far you can get with it.