[development] Human readable taxonomy URLs

[Neil Drumm]

Dries Buytaert wrote:
> I looked at the pathauto module and it is way too complex, and still  
> too restricting at the same time.  The idea of having mappings is  
> interesting, but it's just an idea at this point.  It's not clear how  
> this can be implemented efficiently, or how it can co-exist with the  
> current URL aliasing system.  Certainly worth exploring though.
> 
> All I want is to make it easier to create and edit the URL aliases  for 
> taxonomy terms (tags).  I don't mind to think of a name myself,  but I 
> do mind the fact that it is such a pain to create the alias.   If you 
> add 3 new tags, it will take you 24 clicks or something.
> 
> On the node submission form it is really easy to create aliases and I  
> use it all the time.  When creating new nodes, I haven't missed the  
> pathauto module one second.
> 
> On 21 May 2006, at 11:55, Gerhard Killesreiter wrote:
>> You could look at pathauto module and see if it already provides  
>> automatic aliases for taxo terms. If it does not it should be  fairly 
>> easy to add. I don't think that alias generation should be  tied 
>> directly into taxonomy.module.
> 
> I think it could potentially benefit from better URL alias  
> integration.  Like, on the 'list terms' page (administration  section), 
> it would be very convenient if you could add/edit/maintain  your term's 
> URL aliases in batch mode.  It sounds like a much more  interesting 
> feature than say, the synonym terms support or the  related terms support.

 From the rel-tag spec (http://microformats.org/wiki/rel-tag):

"Tags are embedded in HTTP URIs in a well-defined manner so that the tag 
embedded in an HTTP URI can be mechanically extracted from that URI. 
Specifically, the last segment of the path portion of the URI (after the 
final "/" character) contains the tag value."

In the world of Microformats there is only one url segment after the / 
which properly encodes a tag/category/keyword/term/etc; adding a 
textfield to control that wouldn't be too useful since there is only one 
option for compliance with this spec.

I would like to see core have this without the addition of any UI, 
probably using the approach laid out in http://drupal.org/node/63635 for 
nodes on the code side. The URLs can be '.../{vocabulary}(/{parent 
category})*/{category}'.

And since we are coding Drupal here, might as well throw in an API for a 
pathauto-like module to go and change everything up. A module could Form 
API in a text field for manual editing if someone wants that.

(A system to manage redirects would be nice so URLs get redirects as 
they are changed.)

-- 
Neil Drumm
http://delocalizedham.com/