Short link with "_" or "-": overview not generated

Question

Hello,

I've a very strange problem (I'm using Confluence Cloud).

I use the short links quite much. However, sometimes, the short link is generated with a "_" or "-" at its end.

The link works (when I click on it, the page opens), but the link overview is not generated. Not in the editor itself, and not on the page when I display it.

Here is an example in the screenshot below:

* Three of those short links only contain letters: their overview is generated normally
* Four links ends with "_" or "-": no overview is generated

Seems like some sort of regex problem ? Or is it a setting which I have to modify on my Confluence instance ?

Thank you very much!

Pixel Solutions Informatique · Answer

Hello,

Thank you for your answer.

1) Yes, they apparently are. The links I provide are the ones generated in the "Short link" field of the "Informations about the page" page:

However, it seems that the "/" is present only for the pages which have the problem (in other words for pages with the "_" or "-" at the end).

For the pages which don't have the problem, the short url is generated without the "/" at the end.

2) It's the same. No title overview is generated in both cases (in the editor as well as when displaying the page):

Notice the italic in the first case only...

3) No visible difference in naming pattern... Example of two pages:

"ECH 401 - As a consumer, I want to authenticate inside the application"

=> URL of this page is OK

"ECH 301 - As a consumer, I want to create a user account"

=> URL is not OK (ends with "_/")

NB: All those pages are located at the same place in the Confluence pages hierarchy.

4) Contents of all of those pages is, currently, exactly the same, verbatim: only some titles and a bit "Lorem Ipsum" text.

IMHO, it really seems to be a Confluence bug:

* Either an invalid detection RegEx (if we suppose that having an "_" or "-" at the end of a short URL is OK and should not crash the overview)
* Either in the short url generation itself (if we suppose that having an "_" or "-" at the end of a short URL is not a desirable behaviour)

Many thanks :-)

Diego_88dj6o · Answer

Hello @Pixel Solutions Informatique !
As I understand, the Page Title preview does not work when the Tiny Link to a page has either _ or - characters at the end of the Tiny Link.

I tried to replicate this behaviour based on the description given but was unable to. None of my site pages had Tiny Links with a _ or - at the end.

However, I noticed that your Tiny Links that are affected by the issue had the / at the end. None of my instances Tiny Links has a / at the end.

Taking this details in consideration, I added a / at the end of my Tiny Links the behavior is present. If I do add a / at the end of my Regular page URLs, the behavior is not present.

With this in mind, I would like to confirm a few things with you:

* Are your Tiny Links being natively generated with the / character at the end?
* What happens if you remove the / character from the Tiny Link you pasted?
* What is the naming pattern of the affected pages? 
* Is there any main difference in naming and/or content between the affected pages and the ones that are not affected?

I believe that this behavior might be connected to how Tiny Links are generated. If we look here:

* [Atlassian Documentation] How to programmatically generate the tiny link of a Confluence page

We see that / is part of the Tiny Link being generated. Inserting a / that does not exist within the original Tiny Link might lead Confluence into a dead end where it can not recognize that link as being part of the pages.

Let us hear from you, @Pixel Solutions Informatique . Looking forward to your reply.