How to store your app's entire state in the url • Hacker News Board

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

#201

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jan 09, 2023, 9:22 PM UTC

anshumankmr wrote: post #105

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…

> 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

[deleted]

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

#202

Post by binarymax » Mon, Jan 09, 2023, 9:25 PM UTC

Shameless plug for bashfill - a fun little drawing program for making art for bash stdout: https://max.io/bash.html?zip=eDE1eTF4MjRlMXgzeTF4MzB5MXg1ZTF...

...made in 2013 :) Here's the js that runs it: https://max.io/bash.js

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

#203

Post by temporallobe » Mon, Jan 09, 2023, 9:26 PM UTC

Out of necessity for a very similar issue, I actually wrote a small Javascript utility for this that does all this automatically and uses optional symmetric encryption. Would it be against the rules to post it here?

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

#204

Post by temporallobe » Mon, Jan 09, 2023, 9:28 PM UTC

jonnycomputer wrote: post #104

Why not use localStorage or sessionStorage instead of the URL?

I prefer this as well, but it’s not as portable.

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

#205

Post by BlueNorth » Mon, Jan 09, 2023, 9:29 PM UTC

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]

There are different languages. The jokes are symptomatic of the differences. I'm not Indian but English is laughable for many good reasons. Without damage...

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

#206

Post by MereInterest » Mon, Jan 09, 2023, 9:32 PM UTC

PUSH_AX wrote: post #171

munk-a wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because a thing is prevalent doesn't mean it's good. I have a hard time believing all those parameters are completely necessary for the amount of data being displayed. Often times it feels like people just base64encode(page.state) and call it a day. I think it's advantageous to keep the complexity and specificity of information in URLs to a minimum outside of what's needed to retrieve the data set as it can make…

> Just because a thing is prevalent doesn't mean it's good. I agree with this sentiment. I'm not sure I've ever seen a url referred to as "good", I was just a bit confused as to why someone would baulk at a URL. In my opinion everything after the host portion of the url is to serve the apps needs, so it knows where to go or what to do, it's not really an interface for the user as obviously there are better ways to pr…

I’d say everything after the host is part of the UX, and should serve the user needs. For example:

* Should be book-markable.

* If searching with a query, should have a clear query parameter for ease of browser integration.

* If the URL contains slash dividers that can be read as categories (e.g. storefront.com/department/category/product), then deleting everything after a given slash should go to that category’s page.

* The link should be short enough to be sent over a plain-text conversation without becoming a wall of text.

* The link should be short enough that it cannot hide a malicious subdomain (e.g. Google.com.flights.malicio.us/more/elements).

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

#207

Post by breck » Mon, Jan 09, 2023, 9:33 PM UTC

This is the way. Except I would never encode the data—just store state in plain text. That way you can edit urls by hand in a pinch (comes up a lot, actually). And more trustworthy and you can be sure you take your data with you.

I do this in all my apps. https://ohayo.computer/, https://simoji.pub/, https://try.scroll.pub/, https://jtree.treenotation.org/designer/ etc.

At one point I also made a tiny lib to make it easier:

https://breckyunits.com/patch/

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

#208

Post by kamikaz1k » Mon, Jan 09, 2023, 9:41 PM UTC

devmunchies wrote: post #76

ErrantX wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am genuinely intrigued as to why that's better? Especially as in the second part of your comment you restrict shareability/usability significantly from what the author wants to achieve (IE I can't as a free user bash out a diagram and share it, then later do another and share with a different person). In fact the solution is so elegant when you think on it; free account volume is incredibly scalable, zero storage c…

> Especially as in the second part of your comment you restrict shareability/usability significantly no it doesn't. If my URL is `/thing#a1234` and I share it with you it will load my state for you. If you make a change, it's easy to push a new hash to the url that belongs to you. > I am genuinely intrigued as to why that's better? I didn't say it was better. We engineers are supposed to discuss solutions. I ended my…

not my fight, but you literally wrote:

> Seems like it could be better

Maybe you didn't mean it that way, but it does come across that way. Just a data point for you; I got no beef...

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

#209

Post by gautamdivgi » Mon, Jan 09, 2023, 9:56 PM UTC

Web servers and http enabled services can limit the length of headers and url. While this can be done it runs the risk of having surprises when unknown limits are encountered. Most of these limits are buried deep in docs, not easily visible.

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

#210

Post by jerryzh » Mon, Jan 09, 2023, 9:57 PM UTC

one problem to me is that I run a script remove parameter in url(for tracker) ofc I can set a whitelist but it is a issue i consider