Standardize use of trailing slashes in LMFDB object page URLs

[rvisser7]

This is perhaps a rather minor nitpicky issue, but I think it would be useful to standardize whether different object pages in the LMFDB should have their URL include a trailing forward slash or not. Similar issues about this have also been mentioned previously, e.g. see #4162, #1203 or #12 .

At the moment, most sections seem to have their object pages without a trailing slash (e.g. elliptic curves, genus 2 curves, number fields, p-adics, abstract groups), and adding a trailing forward slash gives a "Page Not Found" error.

However, a few sections like classical newforms (e.g. https://beta.lmfdb.org/ModularForm/GL2/Q/holomorphic/23/1/b/a/), Bianchi cusp forms (e.g. https://beta.lmfdb.org/ModularForm/GL2/ImaginaryQuadratic/2.0.111.1/1.1/a/), and Belyi maps (https://beta.lmfdb.org/Belyi/1T1/1/1/1/a/) seem to include the forward slash by default, where removing the slash now doesn't give an error but just automatically redirects to the URL which contains the trailing slash.

For Dirichlet characters, the individual character and orbit pages are without a trailing slash, yet the character group pages seem to support both, though now the URL without the trailing slash gives incorrect links!

E.g. https://beta.lmfdb.org/Character/Dirichlet/100/ gives the correct page: the group of Dirichlet characters of modulus 100, whereas https://beta.lmfdb.org/Character/Dirichlet/100 also renders the same page, but now the links to the individual characters and orbits in the table don't work properly.

I think it would be good to have a consistent convention throughout the website, and then ensure that the other version with/without a slash redirects to our chosen convention (we'd of course want to avoid breaking existing links to the LMFDB from other sites). 🙂

[jwj61]

Personally, I prefer urls which don't end in a slash and I think that would be the web standard for object home pages. I suppose ideally we accept both in all cases, and possibly redirect to whichever is preferred in a particular case.