title: Compressing parameters in the URL
body: <p>The urls on my site can become very long, and its my understanding that urls are transmitted with the http requests. So the idea came to compress the string in the url.</p>
  
  <p>From my searching on the internet, i found suggestions on using short urls and then link that one to the long url. Id prefer to not use this solution because I would have to do a extra database check to convert between long and short url.</p>
  
  <p>That leaves in my head 3 options:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>Hashing, I don't think this is a option. If you want a safe hashing algorithm, its going to be long.</li>
  <li>Compressing the url string, basically having the server depress the string when when it gets the url parameters.</li>
  <li>Changing the url so its not descriptive, this is bad because it would make development harder for me (This is a 1 man project).</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>Considering the vast amount possible amount of OS/browsers out there, I figured id as if anyone else has tried this or have some clever suggestions.</p>
  
  <p>If it maters the url parameters can reach 100+ chars.</p>
  
  <p>Example:</p>
  
  <pre><code>mysite.com/Reports/Ability.aspx?PlayerID=7737&amp;GuildID=132&amp;AbilityID=1140&amp;EventID=1609&amp;EncounterID=-1&amp;ServerID=17&amp;IsPlayer=True
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>EDIT:</p>
  
  <p>Let me clarify atm this is NOT breaking the site. Its more about me learning to find a good solution ( Im well aware this is micro optimization, my site is very fast atm ) and making my site even faster ( To challenge myself, and become a better coder ).</p>
  
  <p>There is also a cosmetic issue, I personal think that a URL longer then the address bar looks bad.</p>