[Seaside] 'Clean' URLs in Seaside

[Philippe Marschall]

On Thu, May 7, 2015 at 8:34 PM, Phil (list) <pbpublist at gmail.com> wrote:
> Philippe,
>
> On Thu, 2015-05-07 at 14:33 +0200, Philippe Marschall wrote:
>> On Mon, May 4, 2015 at 11:27 AM, Phil (list) <pbpublist at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > I managed to get Seaside 2.x to use 'clean' URLs by following Ramon's
>> > post here http://onsmalltalk.com/clean-urls-in-seaside/  a while back.
>> > However, some things appear to have changed in 3.x and what needs to
>> > change to get rid of the _k parameter (i.e. move it into a cookie) is
>> > different now.  So could anyone with experience in doing this in 3.x
>> > share what's involved?
>> >
>> > Also, it's understandable why passing this in the URL was the way to go
>> > 5+ years ago, but cookies are pretty widely accepted as requirements on
>> > many sites these days.
>>
>> Some countries also have cookie laws (yes, really) that don't apply
>> when you don't use cookies.
>
> Good point... I'm so used to seeing those 'this site uses cookies'
> warnings that I assumed the majority of EU (and other countries with
> similar laws) sites just addressed it via disclosure.  That is a very
> good reason not to enable cookies by default.
>
>>
>> > Is there some reason this hasn't been made a
>> > simple config option as it was for the _s parameter?  Seems like it
>> > would be pretty popular...
>>
>> _k is used to identify the state snapshot. When you hit the back
>> button you need to get the old _k so that Seaside can revert the
>> component state. That's why it is technically not possible to
>> implement it with a cookie. Are you willing to give up state
>> snapshoting?
>>
>
> Thanks for explaining this... I hadn't thought it through but now
> understand why what I was asking for wouldn't work.  To answer your
> question: yes, I would be willing to give up the state snapshot to get
> rid of the parameter.  For this application (basically a simple database
> lookup app), it looks like I can pass all the state needed via
> #updateUrl: to get a bookmark-friendly URL so I think just dropping _k
> entirely could work for me.  How would I do that?

There is a way of doing this if you never use #callback: and a more
complicated one if you want to use #callback:. Time to learn some
Seaside :-)

1. You need a custom WAActionPhaseContinuation subclass that doesn't
make a state snapshot in #continue, maybe you can just get way with
implementing #captureState empty
2. You need a custom WARenderPhaseContinuation subclass that
implements #processRendering: so that the continuation is not added to
the action URL.
3. You need a custom WASession subclass that knows your two
continuations and implements #handleFiltered: so that it finds them
without _k. Is is a bit trickier to do if you do a redirect after
action processing. If you don't do a redirect reloading the page will
execute the last callback again.
4. if you want to use #callback: you have to implement a custom
WACallbackRegistry that "forgets" old callbacks

Having said all of that maybe it is easier to avoid sessions in your
case and use Seaside-REST and do your own rendering with:

WAHtmlCanvas builder
        fullDocument: true;
        render: MyPainter  new

Just remember you can't do #callback: in this case either.

Cheers
Philippe