Comment 13 for bug 400215

On 8 December 2010 01:13, Aaron Bentley <email address hidden> wrote:
> So Martin, you're suggesting we shorten our URLs so that you can make
> them even shorter ?

Ha ha. In a way, yes. Short URLs are useful.

I'm not necessarily suggesting that you make the canonical URLs
shorter, but rather just that if I know the mp id, which is enough to
uniquely identify it, you let me open it. In other words I want to
open something like code.l.n/+merge/1234. I don't care if that
directly serve the content, or if it redirects to the other location.

> In any case, this URL is part of the web service API 1.0, so changing
> the canonical url now is complicated.  It would have to affect only the
> devel API and web site.  And it would break any code that assumed the
> 1.0 API's url was related to the web site URL, e.g. lp-land.  Providing
> it as a redirect instead of a canonical url would be less challenging.

Right, so a redirect could be good.

API clients may actually find it useful to be able to go from the id
to the object.

>
> Tim said: "Despite all this, and whatever our desires may be to avoid
> people talking about reviews using their number, it'll happen anyway
> because it is a single number that uniquely identifies a merge proposal
> / code review."
>
> I have never seen this, so if it happens at all, it's probably too rare
> a case to worry about.

I think there is a chicken and egg: you can't get from the id to the
mp so people don't use them. Instead, I see people using somewhat
vague textual descriptions like "my merge refactoring branch". They
certainly do this with bugs too but at least there they have the
option to say "do you mean 123456?"

--
Martin