Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to store your app's entire state in the url

scottantipa.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 416 posts

Re: How to store your app's entire state in the url

#121

Post by hot_gril »

dyno12345 wrote: post #119
hot_gril wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I decoded that, gzipped --best, then re-encoded and got something that's shorter at least H4sIAAAAAAACA7VU3W7TMBS+5ykmcxuNdOlGyd3QmECCIdYWNKYKnSanqVfHNrbTNqoq7QF4Sp6EYyfpaMYtdz7H5/vOz3fsHePSoVmDYCnbIK5YxDQarnKecVezdBAxx0ucSu5YKishIpaBzAV+47lbsnR4mgxHF+dv4jgZJYPh4PV5xBaCa405SxcgLEZsrUTlKXI0AojTmYq8kD90x8woa5fAzcGxBOMmtUaqSnCJVBVuHRLDE2sJZoVujNZyJS1Ld3viLAqDBTjytGi1FBlrCccZiI4RDHmtq3KOHst+P/6iMk8qmRs6eo9rCDovhXOpKxeiOZ…

you could come up with a better compression scheme given that the dict keys and many of the values are probably common across everyone even if they don't repeat multiple times for a given user. a lot of flexibility would be lost though, and you would need to always update the scheme in a backwards-compatible way.

Could start with a smaller encoding. Use single-length keys, or better yet use protocol buffers or even ASN1. That's similar to taking advantage of common key names.

Re: How to store your app's entire state in the url

#122

Post by orasis »

divbzero wrote: post #86

App state in URL can be a good idea, but if possible I prefer readable path/query parameters instead of unreadable base64 encoding. As one comparison, this is Google Finance encoding stock chart parameters: https://www.google.com/finance/quote/F:NYSE?window=5Y Versus Yahoo! Finance doing the same: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/F/chart?p=F#eyJpbnRlcnZhbCI6IndlZWsiLCJwZXJpb2RpY2l0eSI6MSwidGltZVVuaXQiOm51bGwsImNhbmRsZ…

Another reason to not base64 encode is that many URLs with base64 strings will break in iMessage do to strings randomly matching various keywords that iMessage looks for. I think ‘usd’ is one such substring to look out for.

Re: How to store your app's entire state in the url

#123

Post by waynesonfire »

dyno12345 wrote: post #119
hot_gril wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I decoded that, gzipped --best, then re-encoded and got something that's shorter at least H4sIAAAAAAACA7VU3W7TMBS+5ykmcxuNdOlGyd3QmECCIdYWNKYKnSanqVfHNrbTNqoq7QF4Sp6EYyfpaMYtdz7H5/vOz3fsHePSoVmDYCnbIK5YxDQarnKecVezdBAxx0ucSu5YKishIpaBzAV+47lbsnR4mgxHF+dv4jgZJYPh4PV5xBaCa405SxcgLEZsrUTlKXI0AojTmYq8kD90x8woa5fAzcGxBOMmtUaqSnCJVBVuHRLDE2sJZoVujNZyJS1Ld3viLAqDBTjytGi1FBlrCccZiI4RDHmtq3KOHst+P/6iMk8qmRs6eo9rCDovhXOpKxeiOZ…

you could come up with a better compression scheme given that the dict keys and many of the values are probably common across everyone even if they don't repeat multiple times for a given user. a lot of flexibility would be lost though, and you would need to always update the scheme in a backwards-compatible way.

would it be feasible to include the compression dictionary along w/ the data? And, maybe just send it once on the initial request and store it on the client?

Re: How to store your app's entire state in the url

#124

Post by hot_gril »

divbzero wrote: post #86

App state in URL can be a good idea, but if possible I prefer readable path/query parameters instead of unreadable base64 encoding. As one comparison, this is Google Finance encoding stock chart parameters: https://www.google.com/finance/quote/F:NYSE?window=5Y Versus Yahoo! Finance doing the same: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/F/chart?p=F#eyJpbnRlcnZhbCI6IndlZWsiLCJwZXJpb2RpY2l0eSI6MSwidGltZVVuaXQiOm51bGwsImNhbmRsZ…

I think the other params are custom too. There's probably other state not being stored in that URL. If users want to send charts to each other and have them show up the same, this actually seems like a reasonable way to do it.

Re: How to store your app's entire state in the url

#125

Post by 2ICofafireteam »

xwdv wrote: post #114
anshumankmr wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/F/chart?p=F#eyJpbnRlcnZhbCI6... Dear god... this link was real. I thought it was like a joke or something

[flagged]

I did once and was told off for adding noise to the discussion by someone who didn't see the irony of their complaint also adding to the noise.

Re: How to store your app's entire state in the url

#126

Post by slivanes »

orasis wrote: post #122
divbzero wrote: post #86

App state in URL can be a good idea, but if possible I prefer readable path/query parameters instead of unreadable base64 encoding. As one comparison, this is Google Finance encoding stock chart parameters: https://www.google.com/finance/quote/F:NYSE?window=5Y Versus Yahoo! Finance doing the same: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/F/chart?p=F#eyJpbnRlcnZhbCI6IndlZWsiLCJwZXJpb2RpY2l0eSI6MSwidGltZVVuaXQiOm51bGwsImNhbmRsZ…

Another reason to not base64 encode is that many URLs with base64 strings will break in iMessage do to strings randomly matching various keywords that iMessage looks for. I think ‘usd’ is one such substring to look out for.

base64 does not have the problem here, iMessage has. Frustrating.

Re: How to store your app's entire state in the url

#130

Post by anotheraccount9 »

xwdv wrote: post #114
anshumankmr wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/F/chart?p=F#eyJpbnRlcnZhbCI6... Dear god... this link was real. I thought it was like a joke or something

[flagged]

A horse walks into a bar.

Several of the patrons quickly get up and leave, realizing the potential danger in the situation.

Post reply on HN