Smart links

A smart link is a regular link with a targeting_rules array attached. At redirect time the edge evaluates the rules in order and the first match wins; if nothing matches, the request falls through to the link’s variant rotation (if any) or its default destination_url.

Rules are evaluated at the edge POP, not at origin, so they cost nothing on top of a normal cache-hit redirect.

Anatomy of a rule


{
  "destination_url": "https://example.com/default",
  "targeting_rules": [
    {
      "label": "EU mobile in business hours",
      "match": {
        "countries": ["DE", "FR", "IT", "ES", "NL"],
        "devices": ["mobile", "tablet"],
        "languages": ["de", "fr", "it", "es", "nl"],
        "time_start": "09:00",
        "time_end": "18:00",
        "timezone": "Europe/Berlin",
        "days_of_week": [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
      },
      "destination_url": "https://example.com/eu-mobile"
    },
    {
      "label": "iOS users",
      "match": { "os": ["ios"] },
      "destination_url": "https://apps.apple.com/app/id123"
    }
  ]
}

Each rule has a match object, a destination_url, and an optional label. All conditions in match must hold (AND); within a single condition any value matches (OR). An empty field is a wildcard.

Match conditions

Field	Values	Source
`countries`	ISO-3166-1 alpha-2, e.g. `["US", "CA"]`	CDN geoip header
`devices`	`mobile`, `tablet`, `desktop`	User-Agent
`os`	`ios`, `android`, `macos`, `windows`, `linux`	User-Agent
`browsers`	`chrome`, `safari`, `firefox`, `edge`	User-Agent
`languages`	ISO 639-1, e.g. `["en", "de"]`	`Accept-Language`
`user_agent_regex`	Go regex, ≤256 chars	User-Agent
`time_start` / `time_end`	`HH:MM`, 24-hour, inclusive on both ends	edge clock
`timezone`	IANA name (`America/New_York`)	configured per rule
`days_of_week`	0–6 where 0 = Sunday	edge clock

A few notes:

Time-window wrap. If time_start is later than time_end (22:00 → 02:00), the rule fires on either side of midnight.
days_of_week evaluates against the rule’s timezone, not UTC.
Multi-value vs. legacy single-value. The collection forms (countries, devices, os, browsers, languages) are AND-ed with the older singletons (country, device, browser) if both are set; prefer the collection forms.

Click cap

Independent of targeting, a link can have a hard ceiling on total clicks before it stops resolving:


{ "max_clicks": 10000 }

When max_clicks > 0 the edge increments a Redis counter on every click and 410-Gones the request once the cap is reached. Set to 0 or omit to disable.

Rotation mode

Links with variants[] (A/B testing) pick a variant per request. The strategy is configurable:

`rotation_mode`	Behaviour
`weighted` (default)	Random selection proportional to `weight` on each variant
`round_robin`	Atomic Redis counter cycles `variants[counter % N]`

Round-robin is the right pick for small samples where weighted selection’s variance is too noisy to read. If Redis is briefly unavailable, the edge transparently degrades to weighted random.

Update a link


curl -X PATCH \
  https://api.elido.app/v1/workspaces/1/links/42 \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $ELIDO_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "targeting_rules": [
      { "match": { "os": ["ios"] }, "destination_url": "https://apps.apple.com/app/id123" },
      { "match": { "os": ["android"] }, "destination_url": "https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.x" }
    ]
  }'

The dashboard editor lives at Links → ⋯ → Targeting.