UX: extend permalink with costing options

[nilsnolde]

We have a couple of useful attributes we use in the internal router for permalinks, like profile. However, to be truly useful to power users is costing options support in the permalink. Currently we always reset any costing option when reloading the page. Code-wise this is probably pretty painful, also to maintain it in the future. It'd be great if there'd be some kind of integration test that'd catch when a new costing option/setting was added and fail if it's not considered in the permalink.

[lourduradjou]

Hi @nilsnolde , I’m interested in working on this.

Just to clarify the scope:

• Should all costing options be serialized into the permalink?
• Do you prefer flat query params (e.g., &fixed_speed=...)
  or a JSON-encoded parameter?
• Should we ensure backward compatibility with existing permalinks?

I’d also propose adding an integration test to ensure that
new costing options added in the future are included in the permalink logic.

Happy to start with a draft PR once direction is confirmed.

[nilsnolde]

I'd like to hear @mustaphaturhan 's opinion here. It's not very important honestly, it's very rare that I personally miss this feature. Mustafa can judge a bit better if the code changes would justify the result.

[lourduradjou]

Sure, please take your time. And @nilsnolde do we have any community discussion place like discord or slack? Could you share the link.

[nilsnolde]

Nope, for our own sanity Github is the only place for (targeted) discussions.

[nilsnolde]

I wonder if there's not some "bridge" we can implement between valhalla & web app, like some kind of valhalla API that the web app can query. can be some kind of github file like a json schema, or a HTTP API if that's the only way. I have no idea about this kind of "syncing", too little of a full stack dev.

let's discuss that some time @mustaphaturhan. (or I'll ask AI when I feel less lazy;))

[nilsnolde]

ah never mind! I'll think about that again once I'm less tired..

[rohhann12]

Hey @nilsnolde,I've been looking into this and have something working.

The idea I went with is adding a costing query param to the URL that holds the non-default settings as JSON. So if everything is at defaults the URL stays clean, but if you change something like shortest it shows up in the URL and survives a page reload or being shared.
Switching profiles clears it out since the settings reset anyway. I also skipped exclude_polygons since that's GeoJSON and could get huge and break the flow.