Shareable routes

Please make route links public or allow us to create shareable links for routes we plan.
They don’t necessarily need to show on my profile.

Concrete example: a running buddy and I take turns creating routes for our runs. But when he shares this link with me:

… I just get “You are not authorized to perform this action”.

PS The new route planner is great!

:+1: I’ve already got a privacy setting in there, ready to go. I was able to release it faster by defaulting to private. I also ran into some decisions around definitions/use …

There could be a fully public site-wide list of Routes. People could create some routes in their city & anyone else who comes along could view the list. These could be displayed in a tab on the main Routes list page, and - if I added the ability to associate them with cities directly - a new ‘routes’ tab on the city pages.
The main detractor here is that these public routes would need to be curated in a way… A route that starts/ends outside your front door isn’t going to be as useful/interesting to the general public as a route that starts/ends at a public landmark.

There could be another level of ‘public’ Routes where they can be viewed but aren’t publicly available in any lists. This would be like Google Docs/Drive, where you can access the document if you have the link but it isn’t displayed in any public lists of documents. I see the use case here of creating a route you want to share with a friend, but the route isn’t particularly interesting to anyone else.
Without changing the Route URLs from their current fairly naive format, there’s very little ‘security through obscurity’ that would be possible here.

So, overall - yes I expect this to be released at some point - I just have some more thinking to do.

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Alright, that second option will be in the next release (hopefully tomorrow). There will be a checkbox below the optional name text field & clicking that will allow anyone who’s logged in view the Route page.
This will also include the ability to edit existing Routes (just the name & public setting for now).

There aren’t any public Route lists, yet.

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I too would love to have a function where I could make a route and by sharing the URL with other users of CityStrides (or non users) they could use it too.

This would be very useful as we are throwing a 50km race later this summer and besides marking the course with strips these routes would be a great assurance that people won’t get lost in the Swedish woods. Since there is no tracking involved, runners will not have to fear for the battery life on their cellphones.
I used to use Runkeepers routes a lot before but since they require tracking an activity to see routes battery life was an issue. With your solution I can see myself continuing using routes.

As a side note, sometimes i just use routes to outline a forest in which I want to explore so I know I won’t get lost as long as I keep inside the route. The uses for routes are many. :slight_smile:

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sharing the URL will be a good feature.

I do kind of like the local routes idea, though, especially for when traveling. To think I might be able to someday go somewhere, pick up streets, and not have to be the one developing the out-and-back mess that is a CS run!

Such a great use-case! You can use LifeMap Live to show yourself on the map, but whenever you close the browser it’ll stop tracking you.

Live now! Updates on April 8, 2021 (Release 79)

Yeah, great use-case for Routes attached to cities! It also reinforces my idea that some form of moderation/approval is needed to make sure the list doesn’t fill up with junk… That and/or some ability to find Routes that start within some distance of some place (via mouse click on the map?)

@JamesChevalier

I edited a route name and made it public and when I hit “save” it gave me the “uh oh” message.

I tried to just change the name and save, and tried to just change the privacy and save after that and all three threw the error message (and the name didn’t didn’t change, so the error is before the change is saved to the system.

citystrides.com/routes/1032

I am using chrome on Windows 10

After looking at the code again … I have no idea how this possibly worked when I tested it. :sweat_smile:
I should be able to put together a fix pretty quickly, though. Thanks for reporting!

ok… try that again & it should actually work this time :crossed_fingers:

Success!

I tested all three use cases - changed name then save, change privacy then save, change both, then save.

All worked.

The only thing missing is an indicator on the route page which tells us whether it is private or public without going into the edit function.

Thanks!

:man_facepalming: right… I’ve added that - thanks again

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