dfx canister url

[bitdivine]

Motivation

I have a shell script that I use to get a canister URL. I feel that it might be a good candidate to push upstream. What do you think?

Requirements

• Provide the URL for a given canister. Example: Given a canister "sns_aggregator" defined in dfx.json:

  $ dfx-canister-url --network mainnet sns_aggregator
  https://3r4gx-wqaaa-aaaaq-aaaia-cai.icp0.io
  

• Support --open that opens the URL in a browser instead of printing it. Note: This is a "nice-to-have" but it really is nice to have.
• Provide the raw URL for a given canister. Example:

  $ dfx-canister-url --network mainnet --raw sns_aggregator
  https://3r4gx-wqaaa-aaaaq-aaaia-cai.raw.icp0.io
  

• Support custom URLs, if defined in dfx.json. For example, the nns-dapp has (several) custom domains. The dfx.json schema would be extended to support such a custom URL field. Then this works:

  $ dfx-canister-url --network mainnet nns-dapp
  https://nns.internetcomputer.org
  

• Support custom URLs and raw URLs for networks. For example, some testnets have canister URLs of the form "https://[.raw].mytestnet.foo" and this URL is not provided in networks.json. Networks.json contains a provider for such toy networks but that is not in any way related to the canister URL. Thus the networks.json schema would be extended to include an optional URL from which the canister URLs can be derived. Then:

  dfx-canister-url --network maxtest --raw sns_aggregator
  http://3r4gx-wqaaa-aaaaq-aaaia-cai.raw.maxnet.winning.gold
  

Next steps

• Basic approval for such a command upstream
• Agree on the requirements (can be done piecemeal)
• Implement the code upstream (probably piecemeal, one feature at a time and potentially slowly)
• Throw away the polyfill, so I don't need to maintain it in various downstream repos :-D