When I want to link someone to a part on the Farnell website, I get because the URLs are both horrible and also I have absolutely no guarantee from Farnell that the URL will exist for any given period of time. This is the sort of URL you get for a Farnell part:

http://uk.farnell.com/texas-instruments/cc2520rhdt/transceiver-rf-zigbee-28qfn/dp/1573887?_requestid=22638

There most important part of the above URL is the Farnell part number. The rest is superfluous.

So I created a small script that creates nicer URLs for Farnell’s parts:

http://xgoat.com/p/farnell/1573887

Besides just being generally shorter and easier to parse, these URLs potentially have a longer lifetime. When Farnell change their website and all their URLs change, I can just change my script to match whilst keeping these links valid.

Feel free to use this redirection service. Just stick the Farnell part number on the end of the URL:

http://xgoat.com/p/farnell/${PARTNUMBER}

I had thoughts about adding RS, but haven’t yet got around to it.

Tags: farnell, hacking