ducklink

Ducklink

Ducklink is a super-simple way of centrally managing the format of URLs which should be used for links to other sites. Quack.

Why

• Maybe you have an affiliate deal with a site which requires redirecting through a third-party platform
• Maybe you need to add parameters to URLs for campaign management
• Er..
• Hmm.

How

Given a URL, Ducklink will extract the host and try to match against one of its configured formats.

If nothing matches, the URL is returned untouched. If a match is found, then the URL returned will be based on the format together with any run-time parameters you passed in.

Add parameters

Ducklink::Decorator.configure do
	host 'www.example.com' do
		format '{{url}}?extra=params&added=here'
	end
end

Ducklink.decorate 'http://www.example.com/some/path'
=> http://www.example.com/some/path?extra=params&added=here

Redirects

Ducklink::Decorator.configure do
	host 'www.example.com' do
		format 'http://affiliate.example.com?clickref=42&url={{url}}'
	end
end

Ducklink.decorate 'http://www.example.com/some/path'
=> http://affiliate.example.com?clickref=42&url=http://www.example.com/some/path

If you need to, you can URLEncode the target URL explicitly:

Ducklink::Decorator.configure do
	host 'www.example.com' do
		format 'http://affiliate.example.com?clickref=42&url={{url}}'
		set :url, CGI::escape(self[:url])
	end
end

Ducklink.decorate 'http://www.example.com/some/path'
=> http://affiliate.example.com?clickref=42&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.example.com%2Fsome%2Fpath

Run-time parameters

Ducklink::Decorator.configure do
	host 'www.example.com' do |context|
		format 'http://affiliate.example.com?clickref={{reference}}&url={{url}}'
		set :reference, context[:reference]
	end
end

Ducklink.decorate 'http://www.example.com/some/path', :reference => 100
=> http://affiliate.example.com?clickref=100&url=http://www.example.com/some/path

Specify format of groups

Ducklink::Decorator.configure do
	group do
		format 'http://affiliate.example.com?clickref={{reference}}&url={{url}}#campaign={{campaign}}'
		host 'buy.example.com', 'shop.example.com' do |context|
			set :campaign, 'campaign1'
			set :reference, context[:reference]
		end
		host 'another.com' do |context|
			set :campaign, 'campaign2'
			set :reference, context[:reference]
		end
	end
end

Ducklink.decorate 'http://shop.example.com/goodies', :reference => 100
=> http://affiliate.example.com?clickref=100&url=http://shop.example.com/goodies#campaign=campaign1

TODO

• Tests!
• URL validity checks
• Merge parameters if url already has them
• Intelligently URL encode parameters
• Support introspection of keys expected in context so calling code knows what to provide

Licence

Ducklink is released under the MIT Licence.

Copyright © 2011 Henry Garner