[anon6362]

IIS, Apache HTTPd, and Nginx have supported rewrite rules with wildcards and regex since forever.

Thus, there's no absolute rule that serving a static state must faithfully map to filesystem representation except convenience. Nor, do dynamic requests need to map to include the details of dynamic handler URIs unless the application cannot change generated links.

Revealing backend state, while somewhat Security Through Obscurity (STO)(TM), it's unwise to volunteer extraneous information without a purpose. Preferably, some other simple, one-way hash external representation should be used.

I played client-side Netscape JS and Apache HTTPd CGI bash shell scripts (not even Perl) to write a toy multiuser chat app in 1996. IIRC, it used a primitive form of long polling where it kept an HTTP/0.9 session open with keepalive commands periodically and then broadcasted the message received to all other users who were also connected.

[immibis]

It's always been technically possible to make URLs look how you want but it wasn't always in vogue.

[mpyne]

And in eBay's specific case they may have opted against due to the performance challenges URL rewriting may have involved.

[plorkyeran]

mod_rewrite came out in 1997, which was quite early but still after eBay launched. IIS didn’t get built-in support for URL rewriting until 2008. nginx didn’t even exist until 2004.