Any way to remove the random characters appended to Gallery Custom URLs?

ckelley

When I use the API 1.2.2 to create a stack of three folders and a gallery at the bottom, I get this for the gallery's Custom URL like this one:

http://idtech.smugmug.com/POMONA/IDTC/2014/August04August082014/n-bvD2j/

When created manually will all the same container names, you get this Custom URL:

http://idtech.smugmug.com/POMONA/IDTC/2014/August04August082014/

The user doesn't like the random characters that are appended to the gallery URL when the API creates it.

Here are my questions:

1. Is the random characters being added because all Album.NiceNames must be unique regardless of the folder structure?
2. Is there anyway to prevent the random characters when creating a gallery via the API?
3. Is there anyway to remove the special characters after it is created?

thenickdude

The random characters indicate a gallery which has its privacy option set to Unlisted. If a gallery is set to Unlisted, those characters must be present in the URL in order to prove that you were given the link to the gallery (and haven't just guessed the gallery name).

I think this corresponds to the "Public" setting on smugmug.albums.create.

ckelley

Thank you so much for showing me Album.Public = true to remove the unwanted characters. However, SmugMug still appends "-1" to some of the Album.NiceNames a.k.a. Custom Url. And I cannot find a means to updating Album.NiceName in API 1.2.2 just as you cannot update SubCategory.NiceName.

thenickdude

It's not just adding -1 because the NiceName was already taken by another gallery, is it?

ckelley

The SmugMug API 1.2.2 is automatically appending "-N" where N is a whole number to Album.NiceNames in order to make them unique over the entire account. This is unfortunate for us as our gallery NiceNames onlly need to be unique within their containing folder and we will have a lot of duplicate Album.NiceNames. After the API creates the gallery, I can edit it's settings to remove the "-N" manually. But, this is a step that we don't want to take. And, so far, I have not figured out how to remove the suffix via the API.