Data securely stored in urls.

• url-save output
• short codes through GZip
• serializing through :marshal :yaml
• hashing through DSS DSS1 MD2 MD4 MD5 MDC2 RIPEMD160 SHA SHA1 SHA224 SHA256 SHA384 SHA512

Great for:

• password reset links
• email unsubscribe links
• click tracking
• access control
• ...

gem install url_store

When on Rails, create config/initializers/url_store.rb using generator. A random secret will be generated for you:

rails generate url_store:initializer

Or configure it by hand (e.g in environment.rb):

UrlStore.defaults = {:secret => 'adadasd2adsdasd4ads4eas4dea4dsea4sd'}

In Rails views:

<%= link_to 'paid', :controller =>:payments, :action=>:paid, :data=>UrlStore.encode(:id=>1, :status=>'paid') %>

In controllers:

if data = UrlStore.decode(params[:data])
  Payment.find(data[:id]).update_attribute(:status, data[:status])
else
  raise 'FRAUD!'
end

UrlStore.defaults = {:secret => 'something random'} # ALWAYS use your own secret
UrlStore.defaults = {... , :hasher => 'MD5'} # default: 'SHA1'
UrlStore.defaults = {... , :serializer => :yaml} # default: :marshal

• if you are on rails 4.1+ take a look at Rails.application.message_verifier, it provides a similar feature
• If you need multiple UrlStores, just use UrlStore.new(:secret => 'sadasd', ...)
• As long as you stay under 2k chars there should be no problems. max url lengths per browser/server
• Data is not (yet) encrypted, users could read(but not change) the encoded data
• Replay attacks are possible <-> add a timestamp to check the freshness of the encoded data

• Priit Haamer
• Daniel Murphy

Michael Grosser
michael@grosser.it
License: MIT