The World's Longest URL “Shortener”

The World's Longest URL “Shortener”(aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.com)

45 points by josmek 7 years ago | 31 comments

josmek 7 years ago |

Hey All, OP here, contrary to popular belief I did not make this :) I saw it on GitHub when I noticed someone who starred the Prefect repo had the username `programming`, clicked their profile and saw this: https://github.com/programming/aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa... and just thought it was hilarious. Knew you all would get a kick out of it!

jumbopapa 7 years ago | |

The way GitHub displays it [1] is equally great too.

[1] - https://i.imgur.com/mPqrvaU.png

lzy 7 years ago | |

And here I was wondering why my repo was suddenly getting starred. Glad you enjoyed my work and thanks for sharing it!

x38iq84n 7 years ago |

Good job! Reminds me of my favorite email service http://abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyza....

lzy 7 years ago | |

I'm open to requests for anyone wanting to get their own aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.com email forwarder.

Townley 7 years ago |

Here's a shorter link:

http://aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa...

willvarfar 7 years ago | |

And a link to this discussion:

    http://aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.com/#AAaaAaaAAAAAAAAAAAaAaaAaAAaaAaaAaAaaAaaA

ZoomStop 7 years ago |

The query assigned looks to be random a & A, this is genius.

Watch out for my knock off, bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb.com

mattigames 7 years ago |

If you are going for the longest possible URLls they all should be 2047 characters long[0]

[0] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/417142/what-is-the-maxim...

gzeus 7 years ago |

http://aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa...

The race is to get the longest shortened URL

btown 7 years ago |

Wow - this domain name causes HN to be wider than the screen on mobile!

LocalPCGuy 7 years ago |

Should make a knockoff with wwwwwwwww's since those are the widest characters (in non-fixed width fonts)

guan 7 years ago |

How about a version of this that just uses a’s (or A’s), based on the number of a’s in the URL?

archergod 7 years ago |

Wondering if it is just fun project or there is real world application for this idea?

lzy 7 years ago | |

Mostly for fun. I'd be surprised if there were any real life applications for this!

hammock 7 years ago |

How many A's is that? I can't really tell on mobile.

tsukurimashou 7 years ago | |

63 a

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.com

Townley 7 years ago | |

js4ever 7 years ago |

Haaaaa haaaaa haaaa

kj4ips 7 years ago |

Hacker news tested, Tarzan approved.

iantype 7 years ago |

Thank god for people like you

kernelPan1c 7 years ago |

How does this work?

crayonixel 7 years ago | |

The source code (JavaScript) is quite readable.

This seems to be the backing store:

https://www.jsonstore.io/9cfa993cd55704f2254949dc21a5f3a7a63...

With the ability to get a specific key from this style of URL:

https://www.jsonstore.io/9cfa993cd55704f2254949dc21a5f3a7a63...

And post to it to set a value.

There's no security though - anyone can overwrite any URL - e.g. in the console on that page:

    pushJSON(endpoint + '/AAAAaaAaAaaAAaaAAAAAaAAAAaAAaAAaaaAAAAaA', 'http://www.example.com/');

fortyseven 7 years ago | | |

Looks like there's a limit to the number of urls shortened... it's throwing out the old ones. Womp, womp. :P

tickthokk 7 years ago | |

I'd bet money it's just binary represented in uppercase and lowercase.

AAaAAaAAaaaaaaaaaaAaAAaaAAAaAAaAAAaa = 110110110000000000101100111011011100 = [Some ID in the database]

nunobrito 7 years ago |

Cool stuff.