Provide convenient way to get the current site URL in SEDE query

Question

Since Data Explorer allows us to create links to any of the "unlinked pages" (like suggested-edits, timeline, revisions etc) it would be useful to have a convenient way to get the URL of the site currently selected in the SEDE.
I have recently created a query which does exactly that: Get current site URL. But its reusage in every query which requires that URL (like this one or those) looks like overkill to me. Instead I propose to add se_site_url() function or ##SiteURL## variable (which will be populated with the selected site URL).

Answer 1

Well, since we already support arbitrary autolinking if your results have something like

http://example.com/|link text

I thought the easiest way to solve this problem was to introduce a site:// protocol so you could return a column

'site://posts/' + CAST(Id AS nvarchar) + '/revisions|History for Post ' + 
CAST(Id AS nvarchar) AS [Revisions]

for instance, to produce links in the rendered form of the following Markdown:

[History for Post <id>](http://x.stackexchange.com/posts/<id>/revisions)
                        ^------------------------^ based on queried site

I've pushed out the change to my project, but I'll need to chat with waffles to make sure he's alright with that approach before I can promise it'll end up in the actual Data Explorer. You can see the above example in action in this query.

Hopefully this approach works for your needs too - if you really need the site URL in variable form I don't see why that couldn't be done, but I thought this syntax was a little easier if the primary concern was link construction.