Is it possible to allow us to edit the slugs?

[khanh-momos]

Hi,

I want to modify the slug for an existing short URL. I don't want to just delete the old one and create a new one because I want to keep the short URL analysis data. I know we can easily do this by modifying the database, but is there any plan to have an API to support this for more convenience?

Thank you for your hard work in maintaining this excellent tool! I appreciate it.

[acelaya]

I had the impression this had been discussed in the past, but I couldn't find any issues or discussions on the topic, so I guess I'm thinking on something else.

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, it sounds like a reasonable thing to support. As you mentioned, it's basically the same as deleting a short URL and creating a new one, so Shlink might as well support it in a single step for convenience.

On the other hand, precisely because you can achieve it in a two-step way, I don't know if it's worth the extra complexity, specially considering the treatment required for the short code/custom slug, which would need making sure there's no duplication and a few other checks that make it more brittle and harder to maintain and test.

The main drawback of the second approach is that you would loose all tracked visits, but at the same time I'm wondering, isn't that the point of a new short URL (which is effectively the case if you change the short code)?

For me personally, if I wanted to "change" the short URL, I would disable the first one (for example, by setting a validSince date in the past) and then create the new one pointing to the same long URL.

Then, if I wanted to see combined visits, I would use a common tag in both URLs and see the visits for that tag.

With that in mind, can you present a really good use case and how other Shlink users would benefit from supporting the short code to be edited?