Gossamer Forum: Products: Gossamer Links: Discussions: Ampersand in URLs

Feb 19, 2003, 9:43 AM

Thomas.

Veteran (1210 posts)

Feb 19, 2003, 9:43 AM

Post #1 of 16

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Ampersand in URLs

After having used Links 2.0 for more than 3 years I'm finally part of the LinksSQL universe. What a quantum leap! Smile

Sorry if I'm asking something obvious, but in Links 2.0 I was able to use '&' (ampersand) in categories, so that the URL output looked as follows:

http://blabla.com/Arts_&_Culture/

I transferred my old DB to a test installation of LinksSQL and cats are outputted like this:

http://blabla.com/Arts__Culture/index.html

For reasons of consistency, is there any method of including the &'s in the cat URL?

Feb 19, 2003, 9:56 AM

Andy

Veteran / Moderator (17366 posts)

Feb 19, 2003, 9:56 AM

Post #2 of 16

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Re: [Thomas.] Ampersand in URLs In reply to

I don't think there is. Its a 'foreign charachter' thing...that means you can use any foreign charachters in the category name, without feare of it screwing up. Basically, anything that isn't a-z, 0-9, gets translated into an _.

Hope that helps; and welcome to the LSQL World Smile

(very much doubt you will regret it).

Cheers

Andy (mod)
andy@ultranerds.co.uk

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Feb 19, 2003, 10:02 AM

Thomas.

Veteran (1210 posts)

Feb 19, 2003, 10:02 AM

Post #3 of 16

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Re: [Andy] Ampersand in URLs In reply to

Thanks Andy, it's not a big issue anyhow.

No regrets so far! Cool

Feb 19, 2003, 10:04 AM

Andy

Veteran / Moderator (17366 posts)

Feb 19, 2003, 10:04 AM

Post #4 of 16

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Re: [Thomas.] Ampersand in URLs In reply to

Wait until you get into plugins....so much easier than hacking loads of codes Smile

Andy (mod)
andy@ultranerds.co.uk

Feb 19, 2003, 10:21 AM

Thomas.

Veteran (1210 posts)

Feb 19, 2003, 10:21 AM

Post #5 of 16

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Re: [Andy] Ampersand in URLs In reply to

In fact, I'm still overwhelmed... Cool

I already visited your plugin site. Lots of work ahead, lol.

Feb 19, 2003, 10:26 AM

Andy

Veteran / Moderator (17366 posts)

Feb 19, 2003, 10:26 AM

Post #6 of 16

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Re: [Thomas.] Ampersand in URLs In reply to

If you ever need a hand, send me a PM..I'm sure I can help you out Smile

If its too complex for me, then you could do like I did, and try the forums. A lot of codes and stuff there that can be very helpful Smile

Cheers

Andy (mod)
andy@ultranerds.co.uk

Feb 19, 2003, 10:29 AM

Thomas.

Veteran (1210 posts)

Feb 19, 2003, 10:29 AM

Post #7 of 16

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Re: [Andy] Ampersand in URLs In reply to

Thanks Andy, that's really very kind of you!

So, I'm back into the arcane world of GT plugins... Smile

Feb 19, 2003, 12:38 PM

SeanP

User (456 posts)

Feb 19, 2003, 12:38 PM

Post #8 of 16

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Re: [Thomas.] Ampersand in URLs In reply to

What I did, as suggested by Alex, was to edit admin/links/Category.pm and find the section:

Code:
sub _clean { 
# ------------------------------------------------------------------- 
# Cleans up a name. 
# 
    my $name = shift; 
    $name =~ s/\s/_/g; 
    $name =~ s/[^\w\d_\-\/]/_/g; 
    return $name; 
}

Comment out:

Code:
   $name =~ s/[^\w\d_\-\/]/_/g;

so that is looks like:

Code:
sub _clean { 
# ------------------------------------------------------------------- 
# Cleans up a name. 
# 
    my $name = shift; 
    $name =~ s/\s/_/g; 
#   $name =~ s/[^\w\d_\-\/]/_/g; 
    return $name; 
}

This will still change the spaces to _ but not the special characters. Just be careful when naming categories with odd characters because it might cause a problem. I've had good luck with it so far. Most characters escape themselves properly via the browser so they're not a problem.

Sean

Feb 19, 2003, 1:05 PM

Thomas.

Veteran (1210 posts)

Feb 19, 2003, 1:05 PM

Post #9 of 16

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Re: [SeanP] Ampersand in URLs In reply to

Hi Sean, thanks a lot. I applied your hack, but I also had to modify the sub _valid_dir routine in nph-build.cgi:

I replaced

if ($dir !~ m,^([\w\/\-]+)$,) {

with

if ($dir !~ m,^([\w\/\-\&]+)$,) {

Now it works perfectly.

Feb 19, 2003, 1:16 PM

SeanP

User (456 posts)

Feb 19, 2003, 1:16 PM

Post #10 of 16

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Re: [Thomas.] Ampersand in URLs In reply to

Good catch. I'm running in dynamic mode, so I didn't notice that. Cool

Sean

Nov 8, 2010, 2:04 AM

Thomas.

Veteran (1210 posts)

Nov 8, 2010, 2:04 AM

Post #11 of 16

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Re: [SeanP] Ampersand in URLs In reply to

I apologise for digging up such an old thread, but I have just discovered that GLinks 3.3.0 apparently does not allow foreign characters in category names. It's basically the ampersand issue outlined above.

Also, nph-build.cgi does not have the valid_dir subroutines anymore. Which files would I have to alter in order to get ampersands in categories working?

Thank a lot! Smile

Nov 8, 2010, 2:56 AM

Andy

Veteran / Moderator (17366 posts)

Nov 8, 2010, 2:56 AM

Post #12 of 16

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Re: [Thomas.] Ampersand in URLs In reply to

Hi,

There is a plugin which will convert the charachters into "flat" a-z ... i.e an accented "a" would convert to just an "a" when building the categories (instead of an _)

Lemme just have a quick look to see if I can find the plugin for ya

Cheers

Andy (mod)
andy@ultranerds.co.uk

Nov 8, 2010, 3:02 AM

Andy

Veteran / Moderator (17366 posts)

Nov 8, 2010, 3:02 AM

Post #13 of 16

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Re: [Thomas.] Ampersand in URLs In reply to

Ok, the plugin is called "StaticURLtr", and can be found in Plugins > Download > List All, then goto the last page Smile

Hopefully that will do what you want

Cheers

Andy (mod)
andy@ultranerds.co.uk

Nov 8, 2010, 3:07 AM

Thomas.

Veteran (1210 posts)

Nov 8, 2010, 3:07 AM

Post #14 of 16

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Re: [Andy] Ampersand in URLs In reply to

Thanks Andy, great to see you're still around!

I need to display the ampersand as shown in the first post, e.g. Art & Culture should be converted into and built as Art_&_Culture. Thanks again! Smile

Nov 8, 2010, 3:07 AM

Thomas.

Veteran (1210 posts)

Nov 8, 2010, 3:07 AM

Post #15 of 16

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Re: [Andy] Ampersand in URLs In reply to

Sorry, crossposted. Much obliged!

Nov 8, 2010, 3:09 AM

Andy

Veteran / Moderator (17366 posts)

Nov 8, 2010, 3:09 AM

Post #16 of 16

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Re: [Thomas.] Ampersand in URLs In reply to

Thomas. wrote:

Art & Culture should be converted into and built as Art_&_Culture

Ah ok - thats not possible.

& isn't a valid charachter for a URL ... you would probably have to use "and" as a replacement instead.

Cheers

Andy (mod)
andy@ultranerds.co.uk