Kevin Powell - Community•4mo ago

Architecture Question (not code specific)

I have this locations feature I'm working on implementing and I think I'm getting close to figuring it out but wondering on some architecture decisions. The way everything is set up now looks like this:

1) User enters their location (zip code) into an input field (custom web component) and hits enter
2) Custom web component makes a GET request to an endpoint and the endpoint does a SQL query and returns a URL with the correct page
3) Web component redirects to the URL returned from backend

1) User enters their location (zip code) into an input field (custom web component) and hits enter
2) Custom web component makes a GET request to an endpoint and the endpoint does a SQL query and returns a URL with the correct page
3) Web component redirects to the URL returned from backend

I need to retrofit this. Instead of returning a URL, I need the API to return JSON data of multiple offices AND redirect. Let's look at an easy example of data I could send back to the client:

{
  "offices": {
    "officeOne": { "location": "Philadelphia" },
    "officeTwo": { "location": "Austin" },
  }
}

{
  "offices": {
    "officeOne": { "location": "Philadelphia" },
    "officeTwo": { "location": "Austin" },
  }
}

My question is, what's the best way to accomplish sending JSON data to the client and redirecting? Should I include an object like this:

{
  "offices": {
    "officeOne": { "location": "Philadelphia" },
    "officeTwo": { "location": "Austin" }
  },
  "redirectUrl": "https://redirectedpage.com"
}

{
  "offices": {
    "officeOne": { "location": "Philadelphia" },
    "officeTwo": { "location": "Austin" }
  },
  "redirectUrl": "https://redirectedpage.com"
}

And then put the office data into something like local/sessionStorage or should I put the office data in query parameters? Or am I completely off track and thinking about this wrong?

18 Replies

vince•4mo ago

I think I'm overthinking this / don't really know how, so I'd appreciate some fresh perspectives on this

ἔρως•4mo ago

you can just return the correct url, since the rest of the data is useless unless you want to show a splash screen to inform the person is going to be redirected

vince•4mo ago

wym? I need to send the office data to the client and display it client-side We're using some mixture of Spring Boot & Handlebars so I think there's definitely a better way to do this server-side (without having to do this client-side) but I neither have the know-how for that nor the time so client-side is the straightest path forward

ἔρως•4mo ago

but your task is to redirect to the correct website, right?

vince•4mo ago

Sorry I should have clarified -- the redirected page is owned by our website. On that redirected page will be a custom component that will need to be aware of the office data and render it accordingly. My question is what is the best way to do this client-side: through query params or session / local storage -- or some other options I don't know of?

ἔρως•4mo ago

send the data in the query

vince•4mo ago

And why that over browser storage?

ἔρως•4mo ago

anything can write anything there that means, you can have a conflict just imagine this: the localstorage is updated a few ms after you start loading the other page the page you expected to see won't be valid the data is gone and is not wrong

vince•4mo ago

Not to be pedantic but I just really don't know -- can't the same thing be said for query params? Really, anything can change the url too right?

ἔρως•4mo ago

no, it can't you can't change the query string from another tab you can change the localstorage in any tab including, but not limited to having it deleted

vince•4mo ago

Ohhh I didn't know that but it makes sense. So you're saying hypothetically if I have a key called "offices" in my local storage, and somehow I visit another site that stores an "office" key, it'll be overwritten?

ἔρως•4mo ago

yes and if the user deleted the data before the page loads, it will be gone the best way to pass state between 2 pages is with url parameters you can pass it in the hash string as well

vince•4mo ago

I don't even know what that is but that's headache for another day 😂 Thank you Epic! I wish I didn't have to do this client-side and I could just leverage the codebase but alas

ἔρως•4mo ago

well, it's easier than you could imagine

vince•4mo ago

I don't doubt it but this feature is to be completed ASAP and there's 0 documentation about the codebase lol We already have a zip code lookup which was written by the people that authored the codebase and they used client-side for this (presumably because it's easier) so I've just been copying what they've been doing

ἔρως•4mo ago

that will be a mess

vince•4mo ago

Yup my theory is that they intentionally don't have good documentation so you go to them to do custom development

ἔρως•4mo ago

that is horrible

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