[OPEN-ILS-DEV] Shorter URLs for the OPAC?

[Dan Scott]

Hi:

Now that 1.2.0-rc1 has been released, I've been experimenting a little
more with the OPAC.

The first thing that I was looking at was persistent URL links for a
given title - for example, shortening the link for a given title
resulting from searching for "dogs" and clicking on the first link
from:
  * http://dev.gapines.org/opac/en-US/skin/default/xml/rdetail.xml?r=1544641&t=dogs&tp=keyword&d=0&hc=2989&rt=keyword

to:

 * http://dev.gapines.org/opac/en-US/skin/default/xml/rdetail.xml?r=1544641

Three observations here:

1) I think it should be possible to shorten the URL even further,
perhaps through mod_rewrite , to something like:

http://dev.gapines.org/rdetail/1544641 (defaulting to en_US locale)
and / or
http://dev.gapines.org/ll_LL/rdetail/1544641 (where ll_LL represents
the desired locale)

2) When I eliminate all of the parameters from the URL other than
"?r=1544641", the resulting details page still includes a "My title
results" section in the sidebar (which will get underlined if you
hover over it, but the mouse pointer doesn't change and if you click
it, it results in no action).

3) I took a quick look at Open-ILS/web/opac/common/js/opac_utils.js
and Open-ILS/web/opac/skin/default/js/sidebar.js, but didn't see an
obvious way of saying "don't unhide sidebar_title_results if GET parm
't' is null or does not exist". Would anyone in the know be willing to
walk through the OPAC architecture to help solve this problem, as a
way of making the process explicit for other people interested in
hacking (err, contributing to the further development of...) the OPAC?

Apart from minor modifications as proposed here, I'm toying, for
example, with the idea of generating RSS & Atom feeds for searches to
complement the OpenSearch support that you've already got going.

Many thanks!

-- 
Dan Scott
Laurentian University