AolServer supports the URL syntax as described in RFC 3896. There is a need to support a URL format that doesn't have special characters like the question mark and ampersand.
What is being proposed?
We want to support moving URL query variables to the path portion of the URL. This will allow OpenACS to accept and generate URLs of the format http://host.com/params/param1/value1/param2/value2 equivalent to http://host.com?param1=value1¶m2=value2.
To do this, we may need to register a new filter and/or modify rp_filter. Also, all ns_conn calls need to be changed to ad_conn, hardcoded URLs replaced with calls to export_vars, calls like '[ad_conn url]?[ad_conn query]' replaced with '[ad_return_url]'.
Advantages
Many search engine spiders ignore dynamic pages with URLs containing special symbols like question mark and ampersand. This modification will remove or lessen this limitation.
Already some packages implement an index.vuh page to support pretty urls and this would remove the requirment of special code for building pretty urls.
Disadvantages
Currently, there are about 500 lines that use ns_conn from about 4 dozen packages that need to be changed. Also, we need to change hardcoded URLs from adp and tcl files to calls to export_vars.
How will it work?
If this URL format is turned on, standard URL queries will also be supported. The filter will only extract data from one format or the other on each request. If the /params/ format is detected no query variables after a ? will be processed, and they will be removed the from form query ns_set. All parameters in the correct format will be
added to the form ns_set so normal processing of the query variables can occur. By doing this ad_page_contract will still work.
Procedures such as ad_return_url, export_vars will be changed to return query variables in the new format.
Other places that would need to be changed include ad_conn urlv etc to differeniate between the URL and the query.
