shortlink brainstorming
Part of the shortlink effort. Per the microformats process this page is here to document brainstorming for references to shortened URLs/links.
Additionally documentation of why/how rel="shortlink" was developed/proposed, along with reasoning of why other shortlink formats may be inadequate (extract that from the "inferior alternatives" section at the end of the rel-shortlink page.)
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proposals
hAtom and shortlink
Here is an algorithm for doing shortlink discovery in an hAtom entry:
- In an hAtom post ("hentry"), grab the first link with rel values of "bookmark" and "shortlink" (per rel-shortlink ) and use it as the shortened link for that hAtom entry.
- Lacking any such link, use the first element inside the "hentry" with class names of "url" and "shortlink" inside the hAtom entry.
Advantages over methods involving a separate resource/file;
- No separate file required, no separate discovery path required.
- Much better to keep a tight visible connection between a post and the shortlink for the post. (see Ruby's postulate about metadata / data distance).
A similar algorithm can be applied to an Atom feed with Atom entry elements, using a link element with rel values of alternate and shortlink, and lacking that, nested well-formed (X)HTML in the Atom entry with an element with class name of "shortlink".