To save the url length, why not hash all possible states and have the value of the variable in the query string refer to that?

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poncho_romero 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

This is a viable solution, but as the article mentions, you lose intent and readability (e.g. seeing a query parameter for “product=laptop” vs. “state=XBE4eHgU”). And in general, it’s unlikely you’ll run into issues with URL length. Two to eight thousand characters is a lot!

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threetonesun 4 days ago | parent [-]

I remember bouncing into this limit once in a project because we wanted to make a deeply customized interface shareable without a backend, and while on the site itself we didn't hit a URL limit, when someone shared it via some email clients it added it's own tracking redirect onto the URL which caused it to hit the limit and break.

	▲	capecodes 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		base64(zstd(big state))

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linked_list 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Because a hash is by definition a one-way mapping, so then you'd have to keep a map of the reverse mapping hash -> state, which obviously gets impractical with state such as page index or search terms. Better just make two-way "compression" mapping

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yreg 4 days ago | parent [-]

They probably have meant something like base64 encode

	▲	linked_list 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		If you base64 encode an ascii string it gets 33% longer

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cyptus 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

and where is the hash mapped back again?