CODEWITHSUNDEEP
urlcross-browser
Reactgular
Reactgular

Reputation: 54741

Any problems with using a period in URLs to delimiter data?

I have some easy to read URLs for finding data that belongs to a collection of record IDs that are using a comma as a delimiter.

Example:

http://www.example.com/find:1%2C2%2C3%2C4%2C5

I want to know if I change the delimiter from a comma to a period. Since periods are not a special character in a URL. That means it won't have to be encoded.

Example:

http://www.example.com/find:1.2.3.4.5

Are there any browsers (Firefox, Chrome, IE, etc) that will have a problem with that URL?

There are some related questions here on SO, but none that specific say it's a good or bad practice.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 231

Answers (1)

kako-nawao
kako-nawao

Reputation: 302

To me, that looks like a resource with an odd query string format. If I understand correctly this would be equal to something like:

http://www.example.com/find?id=1&id=2&id=3&id=4&id=5

Since your filter is acting like a multi-select (IDs instead of search fields), that would be my guess at a standard equivalent.

Browsers should not have any issues with it, as long as the application's route mechanism handles it properly. And as long as you are not building that query-like thing with an HTML form (in which case you would need JS or some rewrites, ew!).

May I ask why not use a more standard URL and querystring? Perhaps something that includes element class (/reports/search?name=...), just to know what is being queried by find. Just curious, I knows sometimes standards don't apply.

Upvotes: 1

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