Showing handle info instead of item/string in browser's address bar?

[Night Librarian]

Greetings!

I believe I read an answer to this some time ago, but I can't locate it.  In our institution (on DSpace 7.4), items' URLs in a browser's address bar look like this:

https://mydomain.com/items/8792bc71-856f-4748-bdf3-a9ae5755c28e

Our neighbor institution's URLs look like this:

https://theirinstitution.com/handle/10999/82794

I am not sure what DSpace version they have, but is it possible in our 7.4 to get rid of /items/very_long_number_string and use /handle/handle_prefix/handle_number instead?

[DSpace Technical Support]

Hi,

DSpace 7 user interface's URLs are not customizable.  However, all old-style 6.x Handles should redirect automatically in DSpace 7 to the new URL.  So, an old style URL like [dspace.ui.url]/handle/[prefix]/[suffix] will automatically redirect to a new style URL like [dspace.ui.url]/items/[uuid].

In other words, while DSpace's new URL structure cannot be customized, all old URLs will still work to provide backwards compatibility with 5.x/6.x.

(You are correct, this is a semi-common question when upgrading to 7.x.  Here's where it was last asked: https://groups.google.com/g/dspace-tech/c/cLFoNivftB4/m/8bF59GzzBwAJ )

Tim

[Night Librarian]

Thank you, Tim!

I understand now.  And DSpace will continue to show "Permanent URI for this community" as https://hdl.handle.net/[prefix]/[suffix] on the item's page, so the users should just use this URI to share information about the item, as opposed to the URL from the browser's address bar, right?

[DSpace Technical Support]

Correct, DSpace still does display "https://hdl.handle.net" style URLs on Community/Collection/Item pages if you have DSpace configured to use Handles.  So Handles still work in the same manner. It's just that you'll no longer see those "/handle" URLs in the browser's address bar.

Tim