Short Links for Article URLs

[omenking]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Short Links.

Describe the solution you'd like
Have an alternative link which is shorter than the full article link for sharing on platforms where characters are counted against you.

Describe alternatives you've considered
I can use short link tools but would feel there is more trust with the dev.to url

Additional context

[jessleenyc]

Situations where character counts work against you are less common these days, but this could still be interesting. We'd have to watch out for username conflicts and check if a short link exists if the user doesn't. Alternatively we could delegate to a different domain or subdomain. We're gonna keep thinking about this.

[omenking]

For my use case, the issue was more to do with the physical length of the URL than character restrictions.

Instead of subdomaining, you can do something as such:

dev.to/s/X8yF3

The minimum length for a username in the codebase is 2 characters so this suggested method would not conflict. I agree most platforms restrictions are lifted.

So are the routes for username:

  get "/:username/:slug/comments/new/:parent_id_code" => "comments#new"
  get "/:username/:slug/comments/new" => "comments#new"
  get "/:username/:slug/comments" => "comments#index"
  get "/:username/:slug/comments/:id_code" => "comments#index"
  get "/:username/:slug/comments/:id_code/edit" => "comments#edit"
  get "/:username/:slug/comments/:id_code/delete_confirm" => "comments#delete_confirm"

  # Proper link format
  get "/:username/comment/:id_code" => "comments#index"
  get "/:username/comment/:id_code/edit" => "comments#edit"
  get "/:username/comment/:id_code/delete_confirm" => "comments#delete_confirm"
  get "/:username/comment/:id_code/mod" => "moderations#comment"
  get "/:username/comment/:id_code/settings", to: "comments#settings"

  get "/:username/:slug/:view" => "stories#show",
      constraints: { view: /moderate/ }
  get "/:username/:slug/mod" => "moderations#article"
  get "/:username/:slug/edit" => "articles#edit"
  get "/:username/:slug/delete_confirm" => "articles#delete_confirm"
  get "/:username/:view" => "stories#index",
      constraints: { view: /comments|moderate|admin/ }
  get "/:username/:slug" => "stories#show"
  get "/:username" => "stories#index"

[cmgorton]

Hey all! Moving forward, we would love for people to head over to forem.dev for many of these feature requests that we need more discussion around.

Since this one has been around for a while without much traction I am going to close it and encourage anyone who would like to see this feature in the future to open a discussion in forem.dev. There we can get more eyes on potential features and highlight any we really would love the community to contribute too. Thanks!