catalog navigation links broken when parameters are used - &alias=1 is ignore (repost)

Hi! reposted to Bug Tracking

see http://www.librarything.com/topic/99252

note: Normaly many parameters are not visible. However they are visible in the permanent links.

One strategic question could be:
Which parameters to keep visible and which to keep hidden? I think the answers should take into consideration user / visitor benefits.

If you are a longtime LT user you should agree thet the parameter "&alias=1" is important here especially if the collection has an uncommon distribution:
For me (today): You use: yidish (842), Yiddish (387), jiddisch (85), yiddish (24), jiddish (3)

Regards Reinhardt

Sice my first thought was "this sounds like a feature request", I thought I'd add some additional info. In the linked thread he talks about how the paging links don't take into account the user setting of records per page. So you wind up with a mimatch.

Take the example books in Esperanto language in the catalogue of user "Bibliotekisto" (The Librarian):
http://www.librarything.com/catalog_bottom.php?view=Bibliotekisto&language=e...

catalog navigation preserves the parameters "view=Bibliotekisto", "language=epo". This makes sense.

However there are a lof of other parameters (I wounder if there is a documentation available somewhere):
&alias=1
&author=
&offset=

releted to sort:
&sort=authorunflip relates to "Author"
&sort=comments relates to "Comments"
&sort=date relates to "Date"
&sort=stamp relates to "Entry date"
&sort=ISBN relates to "ISBN"
&sort=lang relates to "Language"
&sort=lccallnumber relates to "LC Classification"
&sort=lang_original relates to "Original language"
&sort=source relates to "Source"
&sort=summary relates to "Summary"
&sort=tags relates to "Tags"
&sort=title relates to "Title"
If "REV" is appended then sort is reversed. example: "&sort=stampREV"

additional parameters which I have identified:
&tag=
&viewforbidden=2 ( no clue what it is for )
&viewstyle=2 (values 1..5)

Conclusions:
a) What strategy to implement is realy not a simple question. Most parameter values can be changed via the catalog setup or the url line.
b) re: aspects of fraud, malicious links posted somewhere on the web: It should be possible to reset the parameters to default via configuration as this is possible now.

Now you're getting pretty solidly into feature requests.

Hi! http://www.librarything.com/tag/chess
shows for me: You use: chess (193), ŝako (5), Schach (3), ajedrez (1)

/catalog/gangleri&tag=chess&alias=1 starts with 199 books. However if I change the display style from A to B only 193 are shown. The same happens if I change the sort criteria

How are you getting the alias link? I didn't think it was still accessible.

The alias link was manualy entered as url.

I think the point is that just manually entering stuff into a URL doesn't result in any particular guaranteed behavior. Should I try entering "&sort=authormiddlename" and complain that it doesn't sort the way I want? Unless the URL is generated by clicking somewhere on a web page, it's not a feature of the site, so it can't be "broken". Whatever parameters the site uses in a URL when you click on a link is just internal implementation details, if there were documentation, it would refer to the link that you clicked, not how the system handles it.

(As long as it doesn't actually damage the data. If manually entering the URL http://www.librarything.com/secret&deleteall=true actually deleted all the data, I would consider that very broken.)

>8 r.orrison:

Right. I think that I removed that as a displayed feature--and I'm not very sorry. I mean, how great a feature is it, exactly? Besides, it's the kind of feature that's likely to irritate people—"that isn't how I'd combine them!"

Anyway, I'm closing this, unless someone finds it accessible. And no, I'd rather not rip the feature entirely out. Consider the appendix.

>6 timspalding: >7 gangleri: The alias link was manualy entered as url..
Please see also http://www.librarything.com/topic/100918 .

There is no difference if the tag name is "novel", "scifi", "history" etc. I forsee that a lot of users might run into this bug.

To expand on gangleri's message:

The &alias=1 links appear on each tag page, in the "Using the tag tag" section -- the count in parentheses after each member name has the &alias=1 parameter.

For example, on the page http://www.librarything.com/tag/Nietzsche the first user listed is "pomonomo2003 (219)" where the 219 is a link to http://www.librarything.com/catalog/pomonomo2003&tag=Nietzsche&alias=1

... and to get back to the subject of the bug, the "1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8" links at the bottom right of that page do not have the &alias=1 parameter that was on the initial link from the tag page.

Note from /topic/102128 Clicking on display style buttons does not give the proper tag link: (the actual bug) "works / is fine for me - the status is reopened - it can be closed"

Fixed.

I can't seem to add a book to my list - I type in the title or author's name and it just jumps back to my list of books not to a list of books by that title or author. I'm not looking for a title on my library but want to put one into my library.

>14 koalamom: This is a very old bug report, and doesn't seem related to the problem you're having at all. It's best to post on a relevant existing bug report (like this one), or create a new one if there isn't an existing report. In any case, there seem to be multiple site issues at the moment, and I'm investigating. I'll post updates on the report I linked here.