url: Update url implementation conformance

[jasnell]

Opening this issue to track the activity. The url module currently does not completely conform to the current url standards (https://url.spec.whatwg.org/) and browser behavior. We'll eventually need to get the implementation updated once the general performance improvements have been made.

There are a number of open issues in http://github.com/joyent/node that deal with url conformance. I will point those to this issue and hold them open until the conformance updates have been made.

[Fishrock123]

I think there was some discussion surrounding nodejs/node#1650 (originally: nodejs/node#933, nodejs/node#1588, nodejs/node#1591) about URL spec conformance, and I think the discussion panned out as "it's not going to be that way for the forseeable future due to potential breakage". It was suggested (by @isaacs I think) that having a spec-compliant URL module in userland would be good.

[jasnell]

I've been contemplating a "url2" module... it's ugly, but it may be the least ugly of the approaches currently.

[Fishrock123]

I really don't think that is a good direction to go in. :/

[jasnell]

Not in core. As a separate module largely to work on the impl.
On Jun 9, 2015 8:18 PM, "Jeremiah Senkpiel" notifications@github.com
wrote:

I really don't think that is a good direction to go in. :/

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nodejs/node#49 (comment).

[ahdinosaur]

👍 to having a spec-compliant URL module in userland

[Sebmaster]

We're currently building a compliant URL lib as part of jsdom at jsdom/whatwg-url. The plan is to have strict spec conformance and closely track and align with the spec (although yesterdays/todays changes aren't in yet).

[stevenvachon]

@Sebmaster that sounds great. Perhaps I'll use it in urlobj I'm using it in specurl which aims to provide nodejs/node#616 and more

[rvagg]

Just to echo @Fishrock123 here: we netted out at leaving things as they are and accepting "non-compliance" (although there was even much argument about whether there really was something to comply with). The whole episode was long, drawn-out and kind of painful, as you would expect when talking about something that could break for large parts of the ecosystem in unknown and unexpected ways when you even make small changes—hence the aborted attempt to change the url module just for performance while bringing in some subtle changes that were actually quite major for some uses.

[rvagg]

discussion should be moved to nodejs/node now, I don't think this has any bearing on convergence per se