feat: Add printer url in search params so that URLs become bookmarkable

[andrewboktor]

Add printer url in search params so that URLs become bookmarkable
Look at search param while loading and use that to find the right config

Resolves #677

Signed-off-by: Andrew Boktor [email protected]

[pedrolamas]

Hi @andrewboktor, first of all, a big THANK YOU for this PR!

I admit I have been working on this for a few months now and my solution was to use the VueRouter to do it, only I was hitting a lot of in-app navigation issues and so I just stopped...

Your approach to altering the main URL (the part before the '#' navigation) is the solution for that problem!

I will be taking this PR as base and merging a few changes (I want to try and ensure that page is not reloaded as it currently does, and am considering replacing the btoa with an MD5 hash instead), but it will definitely be based on the work you have provided here! 😀

[andrewboktor]

Hi @andrewboktor, first of all, a big THANK YOU for this PR!

I admit I have been working on this for a few months now and my solution was to use the VueRouter to do it, only I was hitting a lot of in-app navigation issues and so I just stopped...

Your approach to altering the main URL (the part before the '#' navigation) is the solution for that problem!

I will be taking this PR as base and merging a few changes (I want to try and ensure that page is not reloaded as it currently does, and am considering replacing the btoa with an MD5 hash instead), but it will definitely be based on the work you have provided here! 😀

Yea MD5 hash works too, or any other hash for that matter if we want to make the URLs smaller.
Another alternative I considered was adding an ID to ApiConfig when it's stored in localstorage, but apiUrl works just as well as an ID so I ditched that idea.

I do agree that likely the cleanest solution is to add a "printer" as part of the app paths in the router to all the routes. But didn't go that direction because this likely would require touching a lot of code that I'm not familiar with.

Please let me know if I can yield any assistance, bounce ideas, or prototype some solution or other.
Happy to test if you have a branch as well.

[andrewboktor]

I pulled the branch and ran a quick test and it seems to be working well!
May be an improvement here is to remove the printer from search params if it's not found in localStorage.

[andrewboktor]

I've been using this on my printer server for about 2 days and it's working as expected