694174 - Inconsistent use of "canonical" URL

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Mozilla Labs :: F1, defect)

Description

[Mark Hammond [:markh] [:mhammond]]

Open URL http://pyfound.blogspot.com/2011/10/psf-granted-pytexas-2011-us750.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+PythonSoftwareFoundationNews+%28Python+Software+Foundation+News%29 then open F1.  Also note that this page a a <link rel="canonical"> item which points at the page itself with no query params.

If you share via Twitter, you will see only the "root" of the URL in the twitter message box (ie, that canonical URL), but will see the full URL, including query params, in the "page info" area (ie, the cyan text under the message box).  It is this full URL which is passed as the "link" parameter.

So the end result is that when sharing via twitter one version of the URL is used, but when shared via facebook the full URL is used.  Also FWIW, Facebook itself seems to ignore all the query params - ie, even though we pass that full URL to facebook, it shows the canonical URL in the facebook UI.

The fix is probably to only deal with one version of the URL in the code - ie, once we decide to use the canonical URL, that should be the only version of the URL we actually use.  If we carry around multiple copies of the URL, there is always a risk the wrong one will be chosen - and there isn't currently a use-case for multiple.

Comment 1

[Mark Hammond [:markh] [:mhammond]]

I just noticed another bad side-effect of this confusion - options.url is not currently sanitized against file:// and chrome:// URLs, but this hasn't been detected as the canonicalURL was used in most, but not all, places.

Comment 2

[Mark Hammond [:markh] [:mhammond]]

Attachment: Pointer to Github pull request: https://github.com/mozilla/fx-share-addon/pull/28

Pointer to Github pull-request

Comment 3

[Shane Caraveo (:mixedpuppy)]

pushed https://github.com/mozilla/fx-share-addon/commit/63c823ba3076f5c9c5b72db11a1c8014b35a3bd2