Domainless URLs Requirements doc

Usage Doc: Wiki page

###Intro### We wish to support disabling (optionally or enforced) subdomains in the url hostnames. First approach (PR) was going into too a complex path just for supporting existing /u/xxxx multiuser urls, while that is not mandatory.

###Current URL formats###

• USERNAME.cartodb.com/
• ORGANIZATION.cartodb.com/u/USERNAME

###Proposal that would keep compatibility###

• cartodb.com/user/USERNAME
• ORGANIZATION.cartodb.com/user/USERNAME (^1)
• Config flag to enable/disable this format (for development, custom-installs, etc., but not for cartodb.com)

2nd round:

• ORGANIZATION/cartodb/user/USERNAME (^1) (would require routes.rb changes to have an additional optional param)

(^1) If /user/ is present, subdomain will be silently ignored.

###Current MVC flow###

• If there's an incoming request param user_domain, subdomain is checked from there, else is obtained from request.host (substracting session_domain first, so USERNAME.cartodb.com would become USERNAME). user_domain equals /u/USERNAME
• Then, code (at a few places, sadly is not as clean as should) checks if user_domain is a proper user and belongs to an organization.
  • If it does checks the org present at request.host. If not valid redirects to valid one.
• Code also compares user_domain with current_user, and if different retrieves the User belonging to user_domain and stores it as current_viewer. This is done when you have a session A and are browsing pages of user B.

###Backend changes that proposal requires### Probably a few could be salvaged from URL Rewrites branch

• Refactor of CartoDB class, both to remove stuff that doesn't belongs there and to add
• Refactor of controller code
• Small changes to authentication methods to make sure are always sending proper usernames, etc. for validation.
  • Warden sessions might be affected as they rely now on hostname for the authentication realm/scope (user A's realm is A.cartodb.com, so cartodb.com/user/USERNAME wouldn't work out-of-the-box)
  • UsersController.get_authenticated_users() changes
• Refactor of manual calls to config values regarding subdomains
• Refactor of manual handcrafted urls
• Error of missing user and redirections handling
• Re-adding support for defining http port, and adding another param for https
• Making new format optional or mandatory (needs most of previous work before)
• base_url related changes. Internally will use a base_url_template like {user}.cartodb.com, which will be replaced by decorators, etc. just before sending to frontend code.
• Oembed controller low-level tests and changes to use CartoDB url creation and handling functions whenever possible
• Extract User model methods that operate with URLS to some service object or related class to remove logic from the already hugely heavy model.
• public_url and domainless_public_url from URL rewrite were a good start, but better to fully encapsulate logic. Value object CartoDB::URL is a nice looking solution, could be queried for has_subdomain?, is_domainless? etc. if needed and just doing a .to_s or .url would return the wanted "simple string url"
• Fixes for Visualization::Member

###Frontend changes that proposal requires###

• JS refactor to send base_url (probably now via .config instead of .user_data)
• Support for sql_api_template and maps_api_template