Broken links checker: inconsistent trailing slash behavior about docusaurus

[apfelbox]

Just added a reproducer

[slorber]

Note: please next time create a smaller sandbox repro. It's much easier than dealing with a large custom site with repro instructions.

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Agree there is something unexpected here, only happening for broken anchors (not pathnames).

Repro: https://stackblitz.com/edit/github-u4bsfu?file=src%2Fpages%2Findex.js,src%2Fpages%2Findex.module.css

          <Link
            to="/docs/intro/#getting-started"
          >
            {'/docs/intro/#getting-started'}
          </Link>

          <Link
            to="/blog/welcome"
          >
            {'/blog/welcome'}
          </Link>

          <Link
            to="/blog/welcome/"
          >
            {'/blog/welcome/'}
          </Link>

[WARNING] Docusaurus found broken anchors!

Please check the pages of your site in the list below, and make sure you don't reference any anchor that does not exist.
Note: it's possible to ignore broken anchors with the 'onBrokenAnchors' Docusaurus configuration, and let the build pass.

Exhaustive list of all broken anchors found:

• Broken anchor on source page path = /:
  -> linking to /docs/intro/#getting-started

If we don't report /blog/welcome/ as broken path, there's no reason to report /blog/welcome/#existingAnchor as a broken anchor.

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But the pages themselves are accessible without trailing slash

That might be the case on your current host, or when using docusaurus serve, but it doesn't mean it will be the case for every host. To keep your site portable it's better to always link to the canonical URL.

[apfelbox]

@slorber thank you for your response.

I tried to repro it in a smaller setup, but wasn't able to.

That might be the case on your current host, or when using docusaurus serve, but it doesn't mean it will be the case for every host. To keep your site portable it's better to always link to the canonical URL.

Yes, the web server might treat these requests differently, depending on the trailing slash. In our case, it's Cloudflare Pages and both seem to work.

Is there some documentation about which URL is the canonical one? With or without trailing slash?

[slorber]

Is there some documentation about which URL is the canonical one? With or without trailing slash?

If you choose trailingSlash: undefined it depends if you put a trailing slash or not in your doc slugs. Otherwise it's the URL with/without the trailing slash according to the setting.

Otherwise your all site pages have this standard meta attribute that crawlers (Google) will use:

<link data-rh="true" rel="canonical" href="https://docusaurus.io/docs/installation">

And here's also some doc on how multiple hosts behave differently regarding trailing slash and static file hosting. As you will see, there's no standard behavior.

https://github.com/slorber/trailing-slash-guide