2003/08/26

2003 08 26

Base | Research

17:15

Monstrous URLs deconstructed

Monsterboard uses a dreadful system of URLs, in which they encode enourmous amounts of information about the path a user has taken to get to a certain page. This relates to the bulk of useful pages on their sites: the ones with job ads on them. An example:

http://jobsearch.monsterboard.nl/getjob.asp?JobID=18978741&AVSDM=2003%2D09%2D01+11%3A24%3A00&Logo=1&col=dltci&cy=US&brd=1&lid=157%2C184&fn=&q=LAN+Administrator

As a rule, I include URLs like this one in emails I send as a response to such a job. (not this one, mind you). I got fed up with having to include an apology for the fact that most likely, the email recipient would have to manually paste the URL back together again. Going through URL shortening services like the ones listed here seems like overkill for this one-time usage. In addition to that, I am reasonably afraid it may confuse some recipients that are not necessarily well versed in modern technology. Thus, I had to try to come up with a better idea.

The fact that you can easily run into the same job ad again and again through different searches, where the colour of the link on the page indicated that my browser thinks it has not visited the page before put me onto the idea that there might be search-dependant information buried in the URL itself. A cut-n-paste later confirmed that. For entertainment value, here is an overview of the parts of the URL that I could identify.

http://jobsearch.monsterboard.nl/getjob.asp

This obviously is the host and base URL.

JobID=18978741

This looks to me like a unique identifier of a job ad. (yeah, yeah, very few points for figuring that out.)

AVSDM=2003%2D09%2D01+11%3A24%3A00

This looks a lot easier when de-URL-encoded:

AVSDM=2003/09/01 11:24:00

I am guessing this is the date a job ad was posted. Interestingly, this is not something that can be determined from the page itself. For any given working link to a job ad, however, you can usually navigate away from it and then back, for instance through 'click here to see all [blah] opportunities', then back to the one you came from. The URL in your address bar will have changed and will now at least contain this information.

Logo=1

It seems obvious that it has something to do with a logo, but I have yet to find out which one. Leaving it out of the URL makes no visible difference to the resulting page.

col=dltci cy=US brd=1

Three items that might be 'column', 'currency' and 'border', but their meaning and effects elude me so far.

lid=157%2C184 lid=157,184

These are locale identifiers. To find the ones that are good for you, do a manual search, pick the first job of the list and grab the numbers. I have found that repeating the lid argument works fine.

fn=

An argument I have only ever seen empty.

q=LAN+Administrator

This should obviously be your query.

Some trial and error showed that to refer to a page with a job ad, really the only thing that you need is the Job ID. Thus, this will suffice:

http://jobsearch.monsterboard.nl/getjob.asp?JobID=18978741