TekstiURL

TekstiURL is a concept used in discussions of browser-based sharing of longer text messages by encoding the content into a URL. The idea is to preserve text payloads within the URL itself, either in the path, query string, or fragment, enabling direct access to the text without separate files or uploads. In practice, a tekstiURL encodes the text payload with UTF-8, and often applies compression and a URL-safe encoding such as base64url, producing a string that can be placed in a standard URL. Some proposals include a small prefix or dedicated URI scheme (for example tektil:// or a query parameter like data=) to indicate that the URL contains encoded text rather than a typical resource reference.

Use cases include sharing notes or quotations in environments that restrict attachments, bookmarking or archiving messages, and demonstrations of compact data transport. TekstiURLs are inherently readable only after decoding, so decoding libraries or components are required on the client side.

Limitations include browser and server URL length limits, privacy and security concerns since the text is visible in logs and history, the overhead of encoding and potential loss of formatting, and the absence of a widely adopted standard or interoperability guarantees.

History: The term appeared in informal discussions and experimental prototypes in the 2010s and 2020s as a thought experiment about data in URLs. There is no official standard; implementations vary and are typically custom or experimental rather than widely deployed.

See also: Data URL, URL encoding, base64, URL shortening, URI schemes.