Redirect blog page to latest post?

Question

How can I make it so when the blog link in the nav bar is clicked it redirects to the most recent post?

I know how to display just the latest post on the blog page, but I want it to actually redirect to the post page itself as I'm displaying a full screen background image called in via a custom metabox on each post page.

Is there perhaps a PHP query and redirect function I can apply to the blog page template, or is there a better way?

UPDATE: the following redirect script works great but I just need a way to get the URL of the latest post:

$URL = "http://www.google.com";
wp_redirect( $URL, 301 ); 
exit; 

Answer 1

You can use the get_posts() function:

<?php 
/*
Template Name: Redirect
*/

$args = array(
    'posts_per_page' => '1',
    'post_type' => 'post'
);
$post = get_posts($args);
if($post){
    $url = get_permalink($post[0]->ID);
    wp_redirect( $url, 301 ); 
    exit;
}