How to compress URL parameters

Question

Say I have a single-page application that uses a third party API for content. The app’s logic is in-browser only, and there is no backend I can write to.

To allow de

Answer 1

Short

Use a URL packing scheme such as my own, starting only from the params section of your URL.

Longer

As other's here have pointed out, typical compression systems don't work for short strings. But, it's important to recognise that URLs and Params are a serialization format of a data model: a text human-readable format with specific sections - we know that the scheme is first, the host is found directly after, the port is implied but can be overridden, etc...

With the underlying conceptual data model, one can serialize with a more bit-efficient serialization scheme. In fact, I have created such a serialization myself which archives around 50% compression: see http://blog.alivate.com.au/packed-url/

Conceptually, my scheme was written with the conceptual data model in mind, it doesn't deserialize the URL into that conceptual model as a distinct step. However, that's possible, and that formal approach might yield greater efficiencies, where the bits don't need to be in the same order as what a string URL might be.