Community decision around note/checklist urls

[fccview]

Hi all,
I'm trying to improve things as always and this has been in my mind for a long time.

Originally Jotty notes/checklists were fetched by category + item slug (e.g. note-category/note-title), but that eventually started causing problems due to duplicate names, permissions, security, speed and a ton of other nuances.

I eventually switched to use a uuid approach adding a unique identifier to the notes/checklists frontmatter (this happened a lots of versions ago, some of you oldies running migrations may remember the switch).

I am now asking how you feel about a fairly major change I'm thinking about, to improve things further.
At the moment I am maintaining both the fetch by uuid and fetch by category + id only due to the fact that urls look like this: note/books/book-note-here. This is making coding twice as hard and tedious, how would you feel if the notes/checklist urls were to always be something like note/books/b5225bff-ebab-4acd-a058-e75f54856b2b? This would allow me to directly use that uuid for fetching and FINALLY deprecate the whole getting by id + category nightmare.

This also means a much safer approach around sharing/permissions as that string is truly unique. it'd remove so much overhead from the codebase.

I understand is a big change and people may like the more humanly readable urls, so I don't want to make it before asking you all. This can't be a setting or it defies the point, it's either yes or not, there's no middle ground.

Lemme know your thoughts ❤️

[Marturin]

Hi mate!

While i like the human-readable URLs, if this makes your work easier: go right ahead. The URLs are already weird when you rename objects, keeping the original name, even when the title may be different.

As long as you don't touch my .md files xD

[fccview]

Thank you bud, this really helps and I'd never touch your .md files ❤️

[mlardeur]

Hey!
I don't care about cryptic URL, Jotty is not a public data hosting app so no SEO needed here.
I personally think it's a better pattern to have uuid instead of note title for many reason:

• note renaming
• better security for bot crawling
• model simplicity

Depending on your future approach on category sharing, it could also help on this.

[jaygz316]

Go for it. If it helps you maintain it better, then it sounds like it's good for everyone.

[sethgregory]

100% agreed. Nobody's sharing or manually typing in direct note URLs and SEO is not a concern. Would the backing files then become [uuid].md?

[fccview]

No, actual filenames would remain unchanged, the way jotty (already) fetches items is by searching uuid in the frontmatter.
Currently when you land on a note it's a mad gymnastic, here's what jotty does

1 - Jotty gets /category/note-name
2 - Jotty gets the note uuid by searching by /category/note-name -> returns uuid
3 - From this moment on, all operations work via uuid using grep.

I'd simply love to get rid of that first step and already having the uuid, fetching the right note/checklist uuids from the frontmatter using grep

[IJustWantToAsk]

I don't go into the file system at all so backups are just backups to me, not where I go directly to get my data. If categories could be just metadata that would be great and make shifting of notes between categories faster and easier.
Keep up the great work!

[4rft5]

I'd say if it makes things easier for you, it should be implemented. If someone really wants to link to a note, they could always make a bookmark in their browser or pin it on the main page.

[davehope]

For my personal use case, and now I anticipate others using it, I can't envisage any issues switching to UUID

[dylangits]

100% onboard with this! 👍

[naivchan]

I think the human readable urls are helpful for sharing notes, is there maybe a way we can add custom slugs for those when sharing with a public link?

[rcallison]

I really only use internally and personally, so no sharing on my part. I see no issue with switching to UUID, especially if it makes it easier for you to maintain.