URLs can be shortened further.

[balupton]

Currently for HTML4 browsers, the entire URL besides the hostname is included in the hash. This could be optimised further to just include the relative path to the mother location.

For instance instead of:
http://localhost/products/history.js/demo/#/products/history.js/demo/?state=2

It can become:
http://localhost/products/history.js/demo/#?state=2
or
http://localhost/products/history.js/demo/#./?state=2

Which is a lot leaner.

[marksyzm]

Looking forward to this one - this might be something people should be made aware when using this in conjunction with rewritten URLs though

[balupton]

Will be in v1.6.1.

[marksyzm]

Would you be forcing the paths to be relative to something in particular i.e. the document loaded and can we still use absolute paths? I thought I'd ask at this point before it gets published

[balupton]

Correct.

The long url:
http://localhost/products/history.js/demo/#/products/history.js/demo/?state=2

Will be shortened to:
http://localhost/products/history.js/demo/#./?state=2

However the long url:
http://localhost/products/history.js/demo/#/pages/about

Cannot be shortened further.

So only hashes which are relative to the parent document location will be shortened further by using a relative path.

[mattwright]

Excellent -- I was also hoping for this! Thanks for all the hard work on this library. If it perfectly matches, can it end up with nothing after the hashtag?

For instance, the long URL:

http://localhost/products/history.js/demo/#/products/history.js/demo/

shortened to:

http://localhost/products/history.js/demo/#

[balupton]

This has been added to dev.

[balupton]

v1.7 is now out which resolves this issue :)

[balupton]

Hey guys. Opening this back up for some discussion.

In v1.7 url structure is like so: (option 1)

• http://mysite.com/aaa/#./bbb
• http://mysite.com/aaa/#?x=y
• http://mysite.com/aaa/#bbb/ccc

I'm considering changing it to: (option 2)

• http://mysite.com/aaa/#./bbb
• http://mysite.com/aaa/#?x=y
• http://mysite.com/aaa/#./bbb/ccc

Or: (option 3)

• http://mysite.com/aaa/#./bbb
• http://mysite.com/aaa/#./?x=y
• http://mysite.com/aaa/#./bbb/ccc

Thoughts? As currently in v1.7 the sudden removal of ./ when traversing states from ./bbb to bbb/ccc could potentially be confusing in terms of url hierarchy for unfamiliar users. All feedback is appreciated. Option 3 is the most consistent.

The reason for the ./ in the first place is because #bbb could be a traditional anchor to an element on the page.

[joeybaker]

+1 for option 3 – as you say, it's the most consistent.

[josefrichter]

+1 for option 3

and +1 for just /#/ if user starts from homepage :-)

[deleteme]

+1 for option 3

[mattwright]

I agree a consistent format is nice (option 3). One other thing I would like to see is, if you have a URL like:

http://mysite.com/aaa/filename.html

It will appear in the location bar as:

http://mysite.com/aaa/filename.html#./filename.html

Since it is finding the base directory /aaa/ and then going from there. Is there any chance that if the filename is exactly the same as used in the URL, it just uses an empty hashtag (or something much shorter)? Not being familiar enough with the codebase, that may be a very difficult request, in which case nevermind.

Matt

[balupton]

Thanks everyone for your feedback. I'll make the change to option 3 in the next release :)

@mattwright The issue with having an empty hashtag is that it is ambiguous on whether or not it is a traditional anchor or a state hash. So unfortunately that won't be possible.