Linking from and to Walrus Sites

Walrus Sites links are currently unavailable

This feature is currently unavailable on server-side portals. So if you are browsing a Walrus Site on https://walrus.site, you will not be able to use Walrus Sites links.

We are working on enabling this feature. Stay tuned!

Links in Walrus Sites work almost as you would expect in a regular website. We specify here a few of the details.

Linking to resources within the same site

Relative and absolute links (href="/path/to/resource.html") work as usual.

Linking to resources on the web

Linking to a resource on the web (href="https://some.cdn.example.com/stylesheet.css") also works as usual.

Linking to resources in other Walrus Sites

Here is the part that is a bit different. Assume there is some image that you can browse at https://gallery.walrus.site/walrus_arctic.webp, and you want to link it from your own Walrus Site.

Recall that, however, https://walrus.site is just one of the possibly many portals. I.e., the same resource is browsable from a local portal (http://gallery.localhost:8080/walrus_arctic.webp), or from any other portal (e.g., https://gallery.blob.store/walrus_arctic.webp). Therefore, how can you link the resource in a portal-independent way? This is important for interoperability, availability, and respecting the user's choice of portal.

The solution: Walrus Sites links

We solve this problem by having the portals interpret special links that are normally invalid on the web and redirect to the corresponding Walrus Sites resource in the portal itself.

Consider the example above, where the resource /walrus_arctic.webp is browsed from the Walrus Site with SuiNS name gallery, which points to the object ID abcd123… (in Base36 encoding). Then, the portal-independent link is: https://gallery.suiobj/walrus_arctic.webp. To fix the object ID instead of the SuiNS name, you can use https://abcd123….suiobj/walrus_arctic.webp.

Another possibility is to directly point to the Walrus blob ID of the resource, and have the browser "sniff" the content type. This works for images, for example, but not for script or stylesheets. For example to point to the blob ID (e.g., containing an image) qwer5678…, use the URL https://blobid.walrus/qwer5678….

With such a link, the portal will extract the blob ID and redirect the request to the aggregator it is using to fetch blobs.