URI DEV

General

The current URI system is a mess made up of different sets of parameters for the same purpose depending on who and when wrote something. The idea is to first to remove unnecessary stuff from it, second standardize parameter and third make it richer in feature

Guidelines

URI's:

• don't change
• are human guessable
• are logical (no need to mirror a filesystem)
• help visualize the site structure
• are short
• use lower case
• don't use unexpected punctuation
• lack query parameters
• allow public linking
• are stateless
• don't expose technology

(blatantly stolen from: http://www.eakes.org/archives/2005/01/flickr_uris.html )

what not to do:

• use plural for parameter when you shouldn't (i.e. animes/5 instead of anime/5)
• use "=1/=on". If the parameter is in the URL it is on. If not it's not, which leads to...
• don't add unnecessary parameters

Vision

• 1(!) standardized parser through which the data passes first
• unnecessary scary things like /perl-bin/animedb.pl
• structured URI
• standardized parameter
• let http://anidb.net/gonzo or http://anidb.net/chobits use the Full Text Search and return useful stuff instead of failing ([1]])
• use dictionaries where possible and avoid unnecessary &
• use POST instead of GET when possible. i.e. for adds, deletes, edits, votes. Basically anything that actually modifies data. For anything else (read only) gets should be used.
• ...

shortterm simple Changes

• get rid of "/perl-bin/animedb.pl"

yes we use Perl. no we don't need to throw our "Perl penis into the face of everyone else" (as rar calls it)

• ...

Design idea 1

• http://anidb.net/<page>(/<id|name>/<action>/)/<paratemer>

<id|name> and <action> are only needed for specific entries hence why those pages should not use plural for the pagename i.e. anime instead of animes the plural version should be reserved for lists. so instead of animelist we just use animes. that simpler and more logic. aside shorter.

actions could be:

• /show/ (could be used by default, but we should really just leave that out. unnecessary clutter. accepting it anyway would be fine though. accepting is fine. forcing is bad.)
• /edit/
• /history/
• /vote/
• /delete/

...

parameter could be something like

• /h&mylist&noalias&wishlist&orderby.name.desc

Examples

this:

• http://anidb.net/perl-bin/animedb.pl?h=1&mylist=1&noalias=1&orderby=name&orderdir=0&show=animelist&wishlist=1

could look like this:

• http://anidb.net/animes/porn&inmylist&noalias&wishlist&orderby.name.asc

this:

• http://anidb.net/perl-bin/animedb.pl?show=anime&aid=1

like this:

• http://anidb.net/anime/1

and this:

• http://anidb.net/perl-bin/animedb.pl?show=addanime&edit=1

becomes:

• http://anidb.net/anime/1/edit

Reference Material

• http://miscoranda.com/159
• http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI.html
• http://www.alistapart.com/stories/urls/
• http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/us-cranky8.html?dwzone=usability