How Turbolinks handles redirects

When you visit location `/one` and the server redirects you to location `/two`, you expect the browser’s address bar to display the redirected URL. However, [**Turbolinks**](https://github.com/turbolinks/turbolinks) makes requests using `XMLHttpRequest`, which transparently follows redirects. There’s no way for Turbolinks to tell whether a request resulted in a redirect without additional cooperation from the server.

To work around this problem, Rails sends a `Turbolinks-Location` header in response to a visit that was redirected using `redirect_to`, and Turbolinks will replace the browser’s topmost history entry with the value provided. If for some reason you are performing redirects manually (so-to-speak, without using the `redirect_to` helper method), then you'll have to take care of adding the header yourself.

obie-fernandez
October 24, 2016