[whatwg] URL resolution of fragment urls in html5 webapps

[Igor Minar]

On Thu, Jul 25, 2013 at 3:09 PM, Jonas Sicking <jonas at sicking.cc> wrote:

> On Thu, Jul 18, 2013 at 8:42 AM, Igor Minar <iminar at google.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Jul 18, 2013 at 2:13 AM, Jonas Sicking <jonas at sicking.cc> wrote:
> >>
> >> On Wed, Jul 10, 2013 at 10:24 AM, Alex Russell <slightlyoff at google.com>
> >> wrote:
> >> > hey Igor,
> >> >
> >> > Was just discussing this with Rafael, and it seems like the core issue
> >> > you're flagging is that if a document has a <base> element, all
> #anchor
> >> > navigations (which would otherwise be document relative) are now
> >> > full-page
> >> > navigations to the URL specified in the <base>, not the document's
> >> > "natural" URL. Is that right?
> >> >
> >> > If so, we might be able give you some control over this in the
> >> > Navigation
> >> > Controller (although it's not currently scoped as many folks didn't
> want
> >> > to
> >> > contemplate in-document navigation for the time being).
> >> >
> >> > But perhaps we don't need to do that: is the current behavior the same
> >> > across browsers? If it's not, we might be able to change the spec. If
> it
> >> > is, it'll be harder.
> >>
> >> I really don't want to add something to the navigation controller
> >> specifically for this unless we can show that this is a common use
> >> case.
> >>
> >> Navigation controller is hairy enough as it is without trying to toss
> >> in edge cases into it in at least the first version.
> >>
> >> Igor: I don't quite understand the problem that you are running in to.
> >> Can you provide an example which includes URLs of the initial document
> >> url, the url that you pass to pushState (including if it's relative or
> >> absolute), the value in <base> (again, including if it's relative or
> >> absolute).
> >
> >
> > pushState is actually not even needed to reproduce the same problem. It's
> > enough when the base[href] doesn't match the url of the current document.
> >
> > Check out this simple document:
> > - code+preview: http://plnkr.co/edit/TtH7rjQVKU6qN0QOxULW?p=preview
> > - preview only: http://run.plnkr.co/bY3fF8OOXKq5MrSu/
> >
> > pushState is just an easy way how you can get into situation where the
> url
> > of the current document changes, and base[href] prevents all in-document
> > links to resolve correctly.
>
> I still don't understand how pushState plays into this.


it's just an easy way how to get baseURI out of sync with the URI of the
current document.

as I said before, pushState is not even required to get into this
situation. my demo app above proves that.


> And the
> example doesn't use pushstate so it doesn't help with answering that
> question. Note that pushState also should update the page's baseURI.
>

it doesn't if base[href] is present. and that's the problem for html5 apps
but again, the problem is more generic it just happens that html5 apps are
the most affected.

But yes, <base> can easily mess up all your #foo links.
>

my point is that it shouldn't. fragment urls should always resolve the the
uri of the current document which in all of these cases is different from
baseURI.

/i


>
> / Jonas
>
> >>
> >>
> >> / Jonas
> >>
> >> > On Wed, Jul 10, 2013 at 7:11 AM, Igor Minar <iminar at google.com>
> wrote:
> >> >
> >> >> The current url resolution as
> >> >> described<
> >> >> http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#resolving-urls>in
> >> >> the spec results in some unhelpful behavior when the following
> >> >> combination of web technologies are used in a client-side web app:
> >> >>
> >> >> - a combination of path-relative urls (<a
> >> >> href="relative/url/to/somewhere">link</a>) and fragment/anchor urls
> (<a
> >> >> href="#anchorUrl">link</a>)
> >> >> - history.pushState - used for deep-linking
> >> >> - base[href] - used to properly resolve the relative urls to the root
> >> >> of
> >> >> the application in various deployment environments
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >> Once history.pushState is used to change location.href, the
> >> >> path-relative
> >> >> urls resolve correctly as expected against the base[href], but anchor
> >> >> urls
> >> >> that are only useful if resolved against the current document.baseURI
> >> >> also
> >> >> unsurprisingly resolve against the base[href]. This behavior makes
> them
> >> >> unsuitable for this kind of applications which is a big loss in
> >> >> developers
> >> >> toolbox and in fact breaks existing web features like svg that depend
> >> >> on
> >> >> anchor urls to reference nodes in the current document.
> >> >>
> >> >> Does anyone have thoughts on how one could build a client-side app
> that
> >> >> can
> >> >> be deployed in various contexts without any special server-side
> >> >> templating
> >> >> or build-time pre-processing?
> >> >>
> >> >> The base element looks like a perfect solution for this, if only it
> >> >> didn't
> >> >> break anchor urls.
> >> >>
> >
> >
>