Share a session as a link

The playground keeps its state in the address bar. Each time you move the playhead, select something or act on the cluster, it rewrites the URL, so a copied link reopens the view you are looking at.

Steps

1. Go to the moment you want to share

Move the playhead to the frame the link should open on. In a scripted scenario the link stores that frame. In free play, or in a scenario you have forked into a sandbox, the link stores the actions recorded up to the frame you are on. An action you take from an earlier frame replaces everything that came after it.

2. Copy the link

Select Share link in the top bar. It copies the page’s URL to your clipboard and confirms with “link copied ✓”. On a narrow screen or a touch device the button sits in the ⋯ menu, under share. The address bar holds the same URL, so you can also copy it from there.

A link replays at most 2,000 actions. When the session has recorded more, the confirmation warns that only the first 2,000 will load. With the auto-loop on, every record the producer writes is an action, so a long session gets there; Clear state, above the canvas, empties the action list and keeps the cluster configuration.

3. Know what the link carries

The link is a set of query parameters:

Parameter	What it holds
scenario	The scenario id, or free for free play.
t	The frame to open on. For a forked scenario, the frame you forked from.
actions	Every action you recorded: produced records, kills, restarts, config changes and the rest, each with its time.
cluster	The free-play topology, when it is not Single DC.
size	The free-play cluster shape, when you changed it: brokers, partitions, topics, clients, racks, regions, timing and seed.
panels	Which of the left, right and bottom panels are shown, when not all three are.
select	The canvas item you selected.

The link does not carry the open right-panel tab, the canvas zoom or fullscreen. A scripted scenario opens on the Steps tab, and a sandbox, or a link with a selection, opens on the Inspector.

The terminal session is not in the link either. A command that changed the cluster is in the link the same way the matching button press would be.

The format of these links is public. The playground URL format describes every parameter and the action grammar, for tools that generate links.

Check it worked

Open the link in a new tab. The playground replays the recorded actions and opens on the state they lead to, with the same item selected. If the link carried more actions than the cap, a notice says the shared sandbox was truncated. If the playground cannot rebuild the session from the link, it says so and starts a blank sandbox instead.

Related

• Build a cluster in free play and break it ends by sharing a session.
• Report an issue explains where a link like this helps most.