# Relative Linking in Radiant **URL:** \ **Category:** Radiant CMS\ **Created:** [June 12, 2007, 7:30am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/relative-linking-in-radiant/106585 "2007-06-12T07:30:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/9e8a1a/32.png) [@mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mahadewa)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2007, 7:30am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/relative-linking-in-radiant/106585/1 "2007-06-12T07:30:03Z")
My apologies if this has already been discussed… I’m converting a website which uses relative links into Radiant. Relative links are a bit screwy in Radiant because Radiant has done away with folders. I like this convention – that pages can have children – but browsers still think in terms of folders. The issue is the trailing slash. In the following example: root |- A | |- C | |- D |- B In Radiant, I can render page A in my browser with either: - [http://root/a](http://root/a) - [http://root/a/](http://root/a/) This makes perfect sense since page A is both a child of root/ and the parent of other pages. However, if in page A I have a relative link: , the target page depends on the address used. In the first case, I will be directed to [http://root/b](http://root/b) because the browser thinks I’m in the root/ folder. In the second case, I’m sent to [http://root/a/b](http://root/a/b) because it thinks I’m in the root/a/ folder. Has anyone else run into this? If so, how are you solving it? Is there a best practice here or some Radiant tag, or is everyone just using absolute URLs? ---
**Author:** ![mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/9e8a1a/32.png) [@mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mahadewa)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2007, 11:15am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/relative-linking-in-radiant/106585/2 "2007-06-12T11:15:19Z")
I am not really sure what your problem is here. Parents act like folders as far as the browser is concerned, so nothing has really changed. Ithink your only problem is the leading slash, which will tell the browser to look at the root. So in your example, instead of writing , you need to write [.](https://www.ruby-forum.com/b) [ So basically, you need to put the slash not behind “a”, but in front of “b”. This isn’t anything that has to do with Radiant specifically, but is typical of most content management systems. I know Textpattern works similarly. Is this what you are asking? ](https://www.ruby-forum.com/b) [Keith B. Tel: +49-7731-79838380 removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid ](https://www.ruby-forum.com/b)[http://keithbingman.com](http://keithbingman.com) ---
**Author:** ![mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/9e8a1a/32.png) [@mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mahadewa)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2007, 11:31am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/relative-linking-in-radiant/106585/3 "2007-06-12T11:31:24Z")
On 6/12/07, Chris P. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > However, if in page A I have a relative link: , the target > page depends on the address used. In the first case, I will be directed > to [http://root/b](http://root/b) because the browser thinks I’m in the root/ folder. In > the second case, I’m sent to [http://root/a/b](http://root/a/b) because it thinks I’m in > the root/a/ folder. This is normal behavior and not something you can “fix”. Simply normalize your URLs - choose a convention for trailing slashes and stick to it. ---
**Author:** ![mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/9e8a1a/32.png) [@mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mahadewa)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2007, 4:10pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/relative-linking-in-radiant/106585/4 "2007-06-12T16:10:36Z")
When I worked on kckcc.edu, we had a pretty deep structure in some places. If I wanted quasi-relative URLs I took to using \ or \ where necessary to cut down the typing errors. Sean ---
**Author:** ![mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/9e8a1a/32.png) [@mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mahadewa)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2007, 3:45pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/relative-linking-in-radiant/106585/5 "2007-06-12T15:45:19Z")
Keith B. wrote: > I am not really sure what your problem is here. Parents act like > folders as far as the browser is concerned, so nothing has really > changed. Ithink your only problem is the leading slash, which will > tell the browser to look at the root. So in your example, instead of > writing , you need to write [.](https://www.ruby-forum.com/b) > > [](https://www.ruby-forum.com/b) [ Starting with a leading slash makes the URL absolute rather than relative (not relative to the current page, anyway). I am beginning to think that this is the only real solution. If you have a hierarchy where the pages can get quite deep, this can be a bit of a challenge to remember and type every time, though. ](https://www.ruby-forum.com/b) ---
**Author:** ![mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/9e8a1a/32.png) [@mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mahadewa)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2007, 4:03pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/relative-linking-in-radiant/106585/6 "2007-06-12T16:03:47Z")
Mislav Marohni�? wrote: > On 6/12/07, Chris P. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > > > However, if in page A I have a relative link: , the target > > page depends on the address used. In the first case, I will be directed > > to [http://root/b](http://root/b) because the browser thinks I’m in the root/ folder. In > > the second case, I’m sent to [http://root/a/b](http://root/a/b) because it thinks I’m in > > the root/a/ folder. > > This is normal behavior and not something you can “fix”. > > Simply normalize your URLs - choose a convention for trailing slashes > and > stick to it. The problem with this approach is two-fold: 1.) People make mistakes and if my convention is to always link to page A as ‘root/a/’ and some time down the road, a writer mistakenly links to that page as ‘root/a’ their link will still appear to work. It wouldn’t be apparent to them, however, that they just broke all the relative links inside page A. In a traditional website, this could never happen – the writer would have immediate feedback that their link to page A is wrong. 2.) Even if I could foolproof (enforce) #1, I would still have cases where the user may manually type the URL (either marketing materials tell them to go to: ‘[www.website.com/path](http://www.website.com/path)’ or someone guides them via phone). Again, no matter which way they type it,everything will appear to work to them… until they follow links. And then they just think my site is broken. The only way I think that this premise could work is if you could tell Radiant to enforce a trailing slash on all pages (or no trailing slash on all pages). That way if the user typed (or a link sent them to) ‘[www.website.com/root/a](http://www.website.com/root/a)’ Radiant would automatically redirect to ‘[www.website.com/root/a/](http://www.website.com/root/a/)’ Then a writer could be sure that their pages would work as intended no matter how the user got there. I’m not sure everyone would want this convention or would agree to which way it should work (always or never a slash). Perhaps it could be configurable. Thoughts anyone? ---
**Author:** ![mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/9e8a1a/32.png) [@mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mahadewa)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2007, 5:02pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/relative-linking-in-radiant/106585/7 "2007-06-12T17:02:08Z")
Chris P. wrote: > The only way I think that this premise could work is if you could > tell > configurable. Thoughts anyone? > I agree and support the idea of generally redirecting URLs without a > trailing slash to URLs with trailing slash. I know it is easily done > with every Web server in front of Radiant, but I think this should be > part of Radiant. My only concern about generally enforcing this is that > other document types (images, PDFs, etc.) end up with a trailing slash > as well. Some context-based redirect would solve that, by asking the > addressed page/object to redirect to its canonical URL. Cheers, Oliver ---
**Author:** ![mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/9e8a1a/32.png) [@mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mahadewa)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2007, 5:05pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/relative-linking-in-radiant/106585/8 "2007-06-12T17:05:13Z")
Sean C. wrote: > When I worked on kckcc.edu, we had a pretty deep structure in some > places. If I wanted quasi-relative URLs I took to using \ or > \ where necessary to cut down the typing errors. > > Sean So all your URLs wound up as absolute (href="/path/to/the/new/page") but you only had to input them in a relative-ish fashion (href="\/new/page"). Interesting. It’s beginning to look like true relative links are unworkable (or untrustworthy). ---
**Author:** ![mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/9e8a1a/32.png) [@mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mahadewa)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2007, 5:12pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/relative-linking-in-radiant/106585/9 "2007-06-12T17:12:11Z")
They’re not unworkable, you just have to be very careful about how you use them. In general, I found that you had to prepend the current level of nesting in order to get children of the current page; i.e. if I’m in a page with the “links” slug, I would do href=“links/rails” to get the “rails” child page. So I guess if you’re not using virtual pages, you might be able to get away with \. YMMV. I just did \ because I was lazy and didn’t want to figure out which way it would go. Sean ---
**Author:** ![mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/9e8a1a/32.png) [@mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mahadewa)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2007, 6:32pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/relative-linking-in-radiant/106585/10 "2007-06-12T18:32:33Z")
Mislav Marohnić wrote: > On 6/12/07, Oliver B. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > > > I agree and support the idea of generally redirecting URLs without a > > trailing slash to URLs with trailing slash. I know it is easily done > > with every Web server in front of Radiant, but I think this should be > > part of Radiant. > > I don’t. It’s much better to do on the server (speed-wise). Radiant doesn’t > need such options. Speed-wise it is better on the server, but the server does not know anything about the context. It clearly is the job of the application, otherwise it would be like having Squid decide whether Apache redirects to canonical URLs for directories or not. Also, you can still do it on the server if you want to, even if Radiant has that option. Oliver ---
**Author:** ![mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/9e8a1a/32.png) [@mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mahadewa)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2007, 5:20pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/relative-linking-in-radiant/106585/11 "2007-06-12T17:20:12Z")
On 6/12/07, Oliver B. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > I agree and support the idea of generally redirecting URLs without a > trailing slash to URLs with trailing slash. I know it is easily done > with every Web server in front of Radiant, but I think this should be > part of Radiant. I don’t. It’s much better to do on the server (speed-wise). Radiant doesn’t need such options. ---
**Author:** ![mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/9e8a1a/32.png) [@mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mahadewa)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2007, 8:37pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/relative-linking-in-radiant/106585/12 "2007-06-12T20:37:05Z")
Sean C. wrote: > They’re not unworkable, you just have to be very careful about how > you use them. > I’m in a page with the “links” slug, I would do href=“links/rails” > to get the “rails” child page. Actually, the example above, it only works if your browser is pointed to: ‘[example.com/links](http://example.com/links)’ (i.e. the browser ‘thinks’ its opening the links file in the root directory). If, instead, your browser is pointed to: ‘[example.com/links/](http://example.com/links/)’ (i.e. the browser ‘thinks’ its opening the default file in the links directory), the link sends the browser looking for ‘[example.com/links/links/rails](http://example.com/links/links/rails)’ My point about ‘unworkable’ is that, there is no way to guarantee that user’s browser is always at the address with (or without) trailing slash. And so, if your href’s don’t give the full address from the root, your links may not work. The problem is that Radiant gives feedback that the user’s at the “right” page even when, in fact, they may have the slash wrong for the relative links to work. As for the ability to limit this issue by forcing a trailing slash on every page (or preventing it everywhere), I never considered using the server. I like that. I also agree with Oliver that it fits well in Radiant (I would certainly configure it within Radiant if given that option). But it’s also not something you’d change regularly, so I could make do with Apache. ---
**Author:** ![mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/9e8a1a/32.png) [@mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mahadewa)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2007, 12:11am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/relative-linking-in-radiant/106585/13 "2007-06-13T00:11:43Z")
Oliver B. wrote: > I agree and support the idea of generally redirecting URLs without a > trailing slash to URLs with trailing slash. I know it is easily done > with every Web server in front of Radiant, but I think this should be > part of Radiant. My only concern about generally enforcing this is that > other document types (images, PDFs, etc.) end up with a trailing slash > as well. Some context-based redirect would solve that, by asking the > addressed page/object to redirect to its canonical URL. I would accept a patch that implements this in the following fashion: - URLs without file extensions automatically get redirected to URLs with trailing slashes - URLs with extensions (like .css or .xml) are left alone - There is a configuration variable that turns this behavior on or off Don’t forget unit tests. – John ---
**Author:** ![mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/9e8a1a/32.png) [@mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mahadewa)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2007, 10:15pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/relative-linking-in-radiant/106585/14 "2007-06-12T22:15:26Z")
> My point about ‘unworkable’ is that, there is no way to guarantee that > user’s browser is always at the address with (or without) trailing > slash. And so, if your href’s don’t give the full address from the > root, your links may not work. > > The problem is that Radiant gives feedback that the user’s at the > “right” page even when, in fact, they may have the slash wrong for the > relative links to work. Right – which is why I went with the \ route in the first place. It’s a pain to try to control the existence or absence of that slash. Sean ---
**Author:** ![mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/9e8a1a/32.png) [@mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mahadewa)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2007, 4:52am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/relative-linking-in-radiant/106585/15 "2007-06-13T04:52:08Z")
On 12/06/07 07:10 PM, John W. Long was heard to say: > - URLs without file extensions automatically get redirected to URLs with > trailing slashes > - URLs with extensions (like .css or .xml) are left alone > - There is a configuration variable that turns this behavior on or off Hi John, thanks for your input. I do not think that the file extension is in the general case a good indication for whether a URL should have a trailing slash or not [1]. The canonical URL of a resource should be determined by its corresponding model. ATM, everything in Radiant is a page whether it is HTML or CSS. I would suggest the site controller uses Page#url to determine the canonical URL of a page and redirects accordingly. Page#url or any derived form of it is then responsible of deciding if a trailing slash should be added. If we then want to have CSS and XML without trailing slashes, we can just add a new derived page model that computes the canonical URL differently. [1] [Hypertext Style: Cool URIs don't change.](http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI) Cheers, Oliver ---
**Author:** ![mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/9e8a1a/32.png) [@mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mahadewa)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2007, 5:51am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/relative-linking-in-radiant/106585/16 "2007-06-13T05:51:54Z")
Chris P. wrote: > My point about ‘unworkable’ is that, there is no way to guarantee that > user’s browser is always at the address with (or without) trailing > slash. And so, if your href’s don’t give the full address from the > root, your links may not work. Sure there is. Just set up an apache rewrite rule to remove trailing slashes from any url handled by radiant. Why make this so hard? ---
**Author:** ![mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/9e8a1a/32.png) [@mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mahadewa)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2007, 5:25am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/relative-linking-in-radiant/106585/17 "2007-06-13T05:25:43Z")
Oliver B. wrote: > On 12/06/07 07:10 PM, John W. Long was heard to say: > > > - URLs without file extensions automatically get redirected to URLs with > > trailing slashes > > - URLs with extensions (like .css or .xml) are left alone > > - There is a configuration variable that turns this behavior on or off > > Hi John, > > thanks for your input. I do not think that the file extension is in > the general case a good indication for whether a URL should have a > trailing slash or not [1]. The canonical URL of a resource should be > determined by its corresponding model. ATM, everything in Radiant is a > page whether it is HTML or CSS. I would suggest the site controller > uses Page#url to determine the canonical URL of a page and redirects > accordingly. Page#url or any derived form of it is then responsible of > deciding if a trailing slash should be added. If we then want to have > CSS and XML without trailing slashes, we can just add a new derived > page model that computes the canonical URL differently. > > [1] [Hypertext Style: Cool URIs don't change.](http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI) > > Cheers, > Oliver The interesting thing with Radiant is that it eliminates possible the namespace confusion of something like: root |- A (folder) | |- index (file) |- A (file) which made distinguishing between [example.com/a](http://example.com/a) and [example.com/a/](http://example.com/a/) necessary for browsers in the first place. So, you can safely choose to add slashes or not for EVERY file and know that it’ll all work out. That said, I’d prefer to represent each page as a file to the browser (i.e. [example.com/a](http://example.com/a)) unless someone has a compelling reason it should be treated like a folder. In addition, this method cleans up the whole extension parsing (who cares if it’s a CSS file – nothing gets a slash). @John, So, how about a Radiant configuration setting to either “strip all trailing slashes” or “don’t mess with my slashes dude (current behavior)”? I guess a third option could be ‘force trailing slashes’ (but someone else can contribute that one 😛 ). -Chris ---
**Author:** ![mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/9e8a1a/32.png) [@mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mahadewa)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2007, 4:39pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/relative-linking-in-radiant/106585/18 "2007-06-13T16:39:24Z")
Chris P. wrote: > I guess a third option could be ‘force trailing slashes’ (but someone > else can contribute that one 😛 ). I prefer this one because it makes relative linking easier. – John L. [http://wiseheartdesign.com](http://wiseheartdesign.com) ---
**Author:** ![mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/9e8a1a/32.png) [@mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mahadewa)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2007, 4:41pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/relative-linking-in-radiant/106585/19 "2007-06-13T16:41:24Z")
Oliver B. wrote: > thanks for your input. I do not think that the file extension is in > the general case a good indication for whether a URL should have a > trailing slash or not [1]. The canonical URL of a resource should be > determined by its corresponding model. ATM, everything in Radiant is a > page whether it is HTML or CSS. I would suggest the site controller > uses Page#url to determine the canonical URL of a page and redirects > accordingly. Page#url or any derived form of it is then responsible of > deciding if a trailing slash should be added. If we then want to have > CSS and XML without trailing slashes, we can just add a new derived > page model that computes the canonical URL differently. I’m fine with it being implemented through Page#url, but I would suggest that the default implementation check the file extension to determine if the trailing slash is necessary. – John L. [http://wiseheartdesign.com](http://wiseheartdesign.com) ---
**Author:** ![mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/9e8a1a/32.png) [@mahadewa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mahadewa)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2007, 5:08pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/relative-linking-in-radiant/106585/20 "2007-06-13T17:08:12Z")
John W. Long wrote: > I prefer this one because it makes relative linking easier. You lost me on that one. John. In the example: root |- A | |- F | |- G |- B |- C To get to a child page (say, page F), the trailing slash is more intuitive: - from [example.com/a/](http://example.com/a/) → href=“f/” (you could =“f” too) - from [example.com/a](http://example.com/a) → href=“a/f” (a bit weird) Is this what you were referring to? Of course, when accessing siblings (say page B), the trailing slash is less intuitive: - from [example.com/a/](http://example.com/a/) → href=“…/b/” (also weird) - from [example.com/a](http://example.com/a) → href=“b” If this is what you meant, I don’t see which way is easier. The implementation of no trailing slash is simpler, though. [Next page](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/relative-linking-in-radiant/106585.md?page=2)