CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascripthttp-redirecttwitterurl-shortener
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Reputation: 65

What is the character limit of full links (not shortened) created by twitter's t.co?

I understand there's no theoretical character limit to a URL, but it's 255 for the domain.

The consensus seems to indicate a safe bet is about 2000 characters, but it all depends on the browser and web server.

The twitter API faq for t.co doesn't mention a limit for expanded links, but instead only the shortened links.

I want to use javascript to store self-contained data in the URL, such as with parameters, for object properties that reference the data.

The data stored can be large, so I also want to compress the data so that it will fit in a URL string. This will also require encoding the compressed binary data into Base64 characters that are valid in a URL.

function compressAndEncode(content) {
    const compressed = compress(content);
    const encoded = btoa(String.fromCharCode.apply(null, new Uint8Array(compressed)));
    const params = encodeURIComponent(encoded);
    
    const url = new URL(window.location.href);
    url.searchParams.set('file', params);
    history.pushState(null, '', url);

    const downloadLink = document.getElementById('downloadLink');
    downloadLink.href = `data:application/octet-stream;base64,${encoded}`;
    downloadLink.download = 'compressed_file';
    downloadLink.style.display = 'block';
    downloadLink.textContent = 'Download Compressed File';
}

The code works fine, but there are limits, such as browser limits, and more specifically, twitter link limits for sharing on the platform, which uses it's own in-house link shortener, t.co.

Does anyone know what the maximum character count for a fully-expanded t.co link is, regardless of browser or target web server?

Is there a quick and easy way to check?

What happens if a link is too long?

Upvotes: -1

Views: 210

Answers (1)

coreymaroney
coreymaroney

Reputation: 21

I've discovered after testing the boundaries of this using a URL with a dynamically generated query string in it that the t.co service seems to fail at exactly 4090 characters.

At 4089 characters my URL will consistently generate a valid card and allow posting, and at 4090 characters the tweet composer stops recognizing my URL, does not shorten it, and will not permit the tweet

Upvotes: 1

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