Possible Issues with the Song Page / Song mp3 url?

Found a bug?
#1

It’s two questions really.
I’m not sure whether you’d regard them as issues?
I encountered these over the last few days.

1. Alonetone seems to be setting the song page and mp3 url from the displayed song title, is this the case?
It looks like the uploaded mp3’s Title attribute provides the default for this - I’ve been taking advantage of that for some time.

But if I later use Edit to change the song’s display title, this also seems to change the url?

This has a consequence of breaking any external links to the song that have been distributed.

I discovered it the other day when I got fed up with my somewhat “shouty” way of indicating that a song was a demo. I changed a few from:
My Lovely Song (SONGWRITING DEMO)
To:
My Lovely Song (Acoustic Demo)

The urls all changed, and the external links to the songs were then broken.

Did it used to do this in the “old” days? I can’t remember.

2. Alonetone no longer seems to strip the “troublesome characters” when generating the song page and mp3 url?
In the past, a song title such as:
Delta Dawn (COVER) w. Lady Jane
Resulted in the following url:
/tracks/delta-dawn-cover-w-lady-jane

Nowadays a song title such as:
She’s On The Train From Brighton (Acoustic Demo)
Results in the following url:
/tracks/she’s-on-the-train-from-brighton-(acoustic-demo)

This caused a developer on another site to have a fun few days in his java.

He had fun with the ( ) at first.
And then had a LOT of trouble with the ’

I believe his code was replacing them with character entities when referencing the mp3 urls, and alonetone was responding with a 404?

He’s over it now (:rofl:), so no emergencies for me or him.

But I’m guessing you’re not aware, and you’d actually like to strip characters that could prove unwholesome to other consumer’s processing?

(and, of course, fixing 2 feeds into 1 and… “aghghgh!!”)

It’s definitely not a show stopper for me, but I said I’d let you guys know :grinning:

#2

Both good (and related!) topics!

  1. Updating the permalink on title change is intended. Alonetone has worked that way most of the time, I think! But yikes, I see what you are saying about all your broken links.

The 80% use case is supposed to be when you are editing the title a few times to start with, the permalink will adjust accordingly. But it’s true, after a certain amount of time, you don’t want the permalink to change, as you’ve sent the URL out. Probably a simple checkbox that has a “smart default” (defaults to “change the link” in the first 24 hours, otherwise defaults to off) would be a good solution here.

We give a big warning when changing your login, as that breaks every permalink. Perhaps something similar is warranted on track/playlist edit.

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  1. In 2019, we moved to a new method of generating urls for user generated content and you are right! It doesn’t look like we are pessimistically handling some of those characters. Filed an issue here: https://github.com/sudara/alonetone/issues/1175

Ironically, if we update the character handling in 2), it’ll break a bunch of links for people, as in 1)

Such is the complexity of web development!

What’s the dev working on?

#3

That’s pretty much what I thought you’d say/do :slight_smile:

For least user damage, maybe consider putting the checkbox idea in place first - if possible?
That puts “changing the url and possibly breaking your external links” into the user’s hands and responsibility?
With enough warning text or whatever… but some people will click it anyway, there’s always someone who’ll go “I wonder what ‘wtf’ means?.. oh! wtf!!!” - and he/she will be the one you hear from!! :rofl:

Then do 1175. It only updates the url on a user save doesn’t it?

That way anyone with a dodgy character link has it in their power to choose between “leave it and preserve other links”, or “fix it and break my other links”.

Anyway… from where I stand at the moment, you can leave it as is - I’m not impacted much at all (I noticed and fixed my songcrafters links on the 6 songs I changed before anyone noticed, other links such as whatsapp messages, obviously they’re not trying to following them anyway!!)

The dev is in charge of keeping songcrafters.org going. I think he’s pretty much a one man team after helping out in the early days. He does a fine job, I think for free.

Here’s one example of how the links work there. It’s a thread-based forum, and one of the songs he had trouble with was actually this one:

Most users upload their mp3s into the thread’s first post. But I use a [singlemp3] tag he provided years ago for hosting off-site.

That displays the song player at the bottom of my post. And plays direct from alonetone.
We weren’t having any problems here (aside from me changing the url without realising it - I do think you’re right, I do think it was always doing it that way).

He’s also created a number of “jukeboxes” that prowl through song posts. Every member has a personal jukebox, there’s jukeboxes for festivals, etc, etc. There’s also a latest songs jukebox:

Another member pointed out my songs weren’t in there and that’s how I was alerted to it. It was this jukebox player code that didn’t like the ’ and () characters. He’s beaten it into submission and all my latest songs appear now, and my personal jukebox there is complete.

And NOW, I’d better go and write a song!!!

EDIT: Actually there’s a slight issue with that second box above - once I save my message here, alonetone is going to attempt to link to “action=festival%3sa=LatestSongs” instead of “action=festival;sa=LatestSongs” :rofl:

NOW I’ll get my guitar :laughing: :laughing: :laughing: :laughing:

#4

Ah thanks for the backstory!!

I just double checked this, and we should accept the url encoded version of the url (with the quote/parens replaced), here’s an example: She's On The Train From Brighton (Acoustic Demo) by Andrew Russe | alonetone

Good luck with the writing!

1 Like
#5

Ah! I didn’t see the version before he’d fixed the (), but after he did, I found the url he was sending included the html character entity &#039 for ’ rather than %27 in your example.

It is conceivable he’s sending %27 now? But I doubt it, I think he was sending literal () after he fixed the issue with those. Now it’s all working at that end, I don’t get to see a url, only when alonetone was responding with a 404.

The song’s written. I believe I have a take I like… just been editing a bit out. Just EQ and Reverb choices left to do :+1:

I find it a lot easier writing songs than understanding the ins and outs of this webby stuff! :laughing: