Feature Proposal: Support in TWiki.pm for Shorter URLs, ommiting HomeWeb and WebHome

Motivation

In ShorterUrlCookbook ( Changes to lib/TWiki.pm - for extra shortening ) it is hinted that some code could be add to TWiki.pm to give extra short URLs

Description and Documentation

This proposal is to add a config var, $TWiki::cfg{ShortURLs} that if defined will make autolink topics omit the home topic and even the home web, if defined by the $TWiki::cfg{HomeWebName}, as proposed in CreateHomeWebVariable.

By default TWiki behavior is not changed, but a new bin/configure variable can be set, ShortURLs, that, when set, will make html links created from WikiWords use the short URL form as defined in ShorterUrlCookbook, i.e.

• omitting the topic name if it is the Home Topic (i.e. the $TWiki::cfg{HomeTopicName} var which defaults to WebHome)
• also omitting the web name if it is the Home web (i.e. the $TWiki::cfg{HomeWebName} var which defaults to Home)
• Note that omitting the bin/view prefix is done by setting also the existing TWiki configure var
  $TWiki::cfg{ScriptUrlPaths}{view} = '';
in =lib/LocalSite.cfg

This supposes that the installation is set up to expand back the short URLs should be complemented by, for instance in apache config adding these rules: (these ones suppose that twiki is at the root of the web site, and no perl extension are needed)

  RewriteEngine on 
  RewriteRule ^/Home/WebHome$ / [R=permanent,L] 
  RewriteRule ^/([A-Z].*)/WebHome$ /$1/ [R=permanent,L] 
  RewriteRule ^/Home/([^/]*)$ /$1 [R=permanent,L] 
  RewriteRule ^/bin/view/(.*)$ /$1 [R=permanent,L] 
  RewriteRule ^/bin/view$ / [R=permanent,L]
  RewriteRule ^/([A-Z][^/]*/.*[^/])$ /bin/view/$1 [PT]  
  RewriteRule ^/([A-Z].*)/$ /bin/view/$1/WebHome [PT]  
  RewriteRule ^/([A-Z][^/][^/]*)$ /bin/view/Home/$1 [PT]  
  RewriteRule ^/$ /bin/view/Home/WebHome [PT]  

Examples

See http://wiki.koalaz.net/ navigate in it and observe the URL:

• http://wiki.koalaz.net/ => /bin/view/Home/WebHome
• http://wiki.koalaz.net/Main/ => /bin/view/Main/WebHome
• http://wiki.koalaz.net/WebChanges => /bin/view/Home/WebChanges
• http://wiki.koalaz.net/Main/WebChanges => /bin/view/Main/WebChanges

Impact

WhatDoesItAffect:

Implementation

See proposal implementation as an attached patch 420-shorturls.diff to TWiki-4.2.0 (apply with patch -p0 <420-shorturls.diff It modifies lib/TWiki.pm lib/TWiki.spec

My working dir for this is availabe on the mercurial repository: http://hg.colas.nahaboo.net/twiki-colas/42-shorturls/

-- Contributors: ColasNahaboo - 27 Jan 2008

Discussion

Colas, I think it would be helpful if you added a declaration of what system paths are assumed in this topic. Specifically, I want to know if your code above assumes that the TWiki installation is in the root or in the typical /twiki subdir. This helps me understand when the given paths should read e.g. /bin/view or /twiki/bin/view. Then I can test this on TWikiVMDebianStable as well!

-- TorbenGB - 12 Feb 2008

Ah, normally if your twiki is installed in /twiki, but you want the URLs at root, I think the rules become:

  RewriteEngine on 
  RewriteRule ^/Home/WebHome$ / [R=permanent,L] 
  RewriteRule ^/([A-Z].*)/WebHome$ /$1/ [R=permanent,L] 
  RewriteRule ^/Home/([^/]*)$ /$1 [R=permanent,L] 
  RewriteRule ^/twiki/bin/view/(.*)$ /$1 [R=permanent,L] 
  RewriteRule ^/twiki/bin/view$ / [R=permanent,L]
  RewriteRule ^/([A-Z][^/]*/.*[^/])$ /twiki/bin/view/$1 [PT]  
  RewriteRule ^/([A-Z].*)/$ /twiki/bin/view/$1/WebHome [PT]  
  RewriteRule ^/([A-Z][^/][^/]*)$ /twiki/bin/view/Home/$1 [PT]  
  RewriteRule ^/$ /twiki/bin/view/Home/WebHome [PT]  

-- ColasNahaboo - 12 Feb 2008

FWIW, i usually have something like this: