Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Programming Discussion : PHP variables as directories

[Powi]

Here's an example of what i'm trying to do...

http://good-tutorials.com/search/tutorials/car

On this url, "car" is a variable, but it is passed as if it was a dir, and not like /tutorials.php?search=car

Can anyone help me do this?

Hope you understand

Powi

[spt1224]

I have never done this, but I know that MediaWiki, among others, does this. I'm pretty sure that they use Apache URL rewrite directives (or the equivalent for other servers) in .htaccess files.

I can elaborate, if you wish.

[mwatkins]

PHP natively doesn't allow for this.

First attempts in PHP to create "nice" urls where the path expressed a series of objects and methods or "variables" as you say were done by using mod_rewrite.

I have done this; to me url design (this predates REST as an architectural style but was alone the same lines of thinking) is important. It encourages good clean app design and helps ensure your URL's will have a fair chance of being permanent.

But using mod_rewrite and equiv. is horribly clunky and cumbersome, especially if you have a url schema that is more than just a couple of objects and methods.

That's one of the reasons I left PHP years ago, in favour of Python.

At the time Zope (and its ancestors) had a very cool method of exposing an object via the web that gave you sensible URL's by default, for example:

http://foo.com/cars/fairlane/
http://foo.com/cars/fairlane/edit
http://foo.com/cars/fairlane/rss
http://foo.com/cars/rss

or

http://knowit.com/tutorials/car

No need to embed the term "search" in there when what you want is the "car" object.

Anyway, I looked into Zope. It had a lot of power but was overly complex. At the same time another Python web framework that essentially replicated the same technique for "publishing objects via the web" was born called Quixote. I've been using Quixote or its cousin QP ever since.

Now PHP has "web frameworks" too, but at the time there was essentially nothing of similar power, and the language itself lacked the type of expressiveness that Python had. I went from being a relatively experienced PHP (and ASP of the day) developer to a Python newbie, totally wet behind the ears, but was doing project work at double the effectiveness or more within just a few weeks.

Quixote, QP (and a terrific object database called Durus):
http://www.mems-exchange.org/software/

Zope, the grandaddy of them all:
http://www.zope.org/

The most visible Python web frameworks out there these days all do what QP and Quixote and Zope have been doing for years - and are also worth serious consideration:

Django: http://www.djangoproject.com/
TurboGears: http://www.turbogears.org/
Pylons: http://pylonshq.com/

Ruby, another object oriented language, also has an extremely popular web framework called Rails:
http://rubyonrails.org/

Quite often a developer given Python or Ruby code to look at will intuitively prefer one or the other. They have different styles. Python is probably easier to learn as it reads more like english; experienced developers coming from other languages such as Java would find either fits their brain but one will appear more. Pick either, both are good. I happen to prefer the look and readability of Python.

Hopefully someone will point out some PHP frameworks that do something similar to "object publishing".

[kuku]

make an .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /

RewriteRule ^([A-z]{1,25})/([A-z0-9]{1,27})[/]{0,1}index.php?module=$1&action=$2&%1 [L]
RewriteRule ^([A-z]{1,25})[/]{0,1}$ index.php?module=$1&action=none [L]


www.domain.com/client/add/

will get rewritten as: http://www.domain.com/index.php?modu...ent&action=add

[mwatkins]

Oh come on now, where is the fun in simply answering the question?

(just kidding kuku)

[Powi]

WORKED! thanks a lot to all of you!

Just one more question:

What does the "{1,27}" part of the RewriteRule means??

Thanks again

Powi

[kuku]

It means it will match the rule if there are between 1 and 27 characters.

[sasha]

Here is my default .htaccess

There is one limitation though, you can capture only 4 value/key pairs this way. If someone knows a way around it, I would love to know it.

Options -Indexes
DirectoryIndex index.php
# error pages
ErrorDocument 400 /index.php?page=front_error&code=400
ErrorDocument 401 /index.php?page=front_error&code=401
ErrorDocument 403 /index.php?page=front_error&code=403
ErrorDocument 404 /index.php?page=front_error&code=404
ErrorDocument 500 /index.php?page=front_error&code=500

RewriteEngine on
# keep the page rank on www
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com\.com
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} ^80$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301]

# standard link rewriting
RewriteRule ^content/([a-zA-Z0-9]+)/([^/]+)/([a-zA-Z0-9]+)/([^/]+)/([a-zA-Z0-9]+)/([^/]+)/([a-zA-Z0-9]+)/([^/]+) index.php?$1=$2&$3=$
RewriteRule ^content/([a-zA-Z0-9]+)/([^/]+)/([a-zA-Z0-9]+)/([^/]+)/([a-zA-Z0-9]+)/([^/]+) index.php?$1=$2&$3=$4&$5=$6 [L]
RewriteRule ^content/([a-zA-Z0-9]+)/([^/]+)/([a-zA-Z0-9]+)/([^/]+) index.php?$1=$2&$3=$4 [L]
RewriteRule ^content/([a-zA-Z0-9]+)/([^/]+) index.php?$1=$2 [L]
RewriteRule ^content index.php [L]

Sample url:

http://example.com/content/page/test.../blahblah.html
will be rewritten as:

http://www.example.com/index.php?pag...ubsection=love

[Anatoly_ua]

Still another option could have been (at least this workd best for me): put in .htaccess :

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)  index.php

and then in index.php process the variable $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']...

[Powi]

Done it! Worked! thanks!

[superdooper]

out of interest, which option did you use?

[mwatkins]

Anatoly's "option" provides a lot more flexibility but requires that your PHP code parse out the request URI; the other ReWrite solution first proposed does a direct 1:1 mapping between URI patterns and pages/functions.

The former could be used to build a dispatch system that would look more like the Python oriented solutions I discussed, but would take some work. No doubt some PHP web frameworks take such a road.

The pattern based ReWrite rule solution first proposed on the thread is fairly easy to bolt on to an existing, working site, delivering the principal benefit of a cleaner URL to the user.

I'm betting the OP chose that root (not Anatoly's option).

[Powi]

I finally chose kuku's option but changed it a little bit. It's working great.

Now I have one more question:

PHP Code:

RewriteRule ^([A-z0-9]+)[/]{0,1}$ index.php?module=$1 [L] 


Will rewrite all directories...

What if i want it to do this for all dirs, EXCEPT for the /img dir?

Thanks again!

Powi

[kuku]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/img

[ApplePro]

Originally Posted by kuku

make an .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /

RewriteRule ^([A-z]{1,25})/([A-z0-9]{1,27})[/]{0,1}index.php?module=$1&action=$2&%1 [L]
RewriteRule ^([A-z]{1,25})[/]{0,1}$ index.php?module=$1&action=none [L]


www.domain.com/client/add/

will get rewritten as: http://www.domain.com/index.php?modu...ent&action=add

I've just tried to put this .htaccess to directory "a" on my server. But when I run this URL in my browser:

http://www.example.com/a/france/paris/

I get 404 error. Am I doing something wrong?