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Comment by MPSimmons

6 days ago

One example I think is super interesting is the NWS Radar site, https://radar.weather.gov/

If you go there, that's the URL you get. However, if you do anything with the map, your URL changes to something like

https://radar.weather.gov/?settings=v1_eyJhZ2VuZGEiOnsiaWQiO...

Which, if you take the base64 encoded string, strip off the control characters, pad it out to a valid base64 string, you get

"eyJhZ2VuZGEiOnsiaWQiOm51bGwsImNlbnRlciI6Wy0xMTUuOTI1LDM2LjAwNl0sImxvY2F0aW9uIjpudWxsLCJ6b29tIjo2LjM1MzMzMzMzMzMzMzMzMzV9LCJhbmltYXRpbmciOmZhbHNlLCJiYXNlIjoic3RhbmRhcmQiLCJhcnRjYyI6ZmFsc2UsImNvdW50eSI6ZmFsc2UsImN3YSI6ZmFsc2UsInJmYyI6ZmFsc2UsInN0YXRlIjpmYWxzZSwibWVudSI6dHJ1ZSwic2hvcnRGdXNlZE9ubHkiOmZhbHNlLCJvcGFjaXR5Ijp7ImFsZXJ0cyI6MC44LCJsb2NhbCI6MC42LCJsb2NhbFN0YXRpb25zIjowLjgsIm5hdGlvbmFsIjowLjZ9fQ==", which decodes into:

{"agenda":{"id":null,"center":[-115.925,36.006],"location":null,"zoom":6.3533333333333335},"animating":false,"base":"standard","artcc":false,"county":false,"cwa":false,"rfc":false,"state":false,"menu":true,"shortFusedOnly":false,"opacity":{"alerts":0.8,"local":0.6,"localStations":0.8,"national":0.6}}

I only know this because I've spent a ton of time working with the NWS data - I'm founding a company that's working on bringing live local weather news to every community that needs it - https://www.lwnn.news/

8 comments

MPSimmons

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asielen  6 days ago

In this case, why encode the string instead of just having the options as plain text parameters?

  • qdotme  6 days ago

    Nesting, mostly (having used that trick a lot, though I usually sign that record if originating from server).

    I've almost entirely moved to Rust/WASM for browser logic, and I just use serde crate to produce compact representation of the record, but I've seen protobufs used as well.

    Otherwise you end up with parsing monsters like ?actions[3].replay__timestamp[0]=0.444 vs {"actions": [,,,{"replay":{"timestamp":[0.444, 0.888]}]}

toxik  6 days ago

Sorry but this is legitimately a terrible way to encode this data. The number 0.8 is encoded as base64 encoded ascii decimals. The bits 1 and 0 similarly. URLs should not be long for many reasons, like sharing and preventing them from being cut off.