Re: [PHP] Creating User Friendly URLS [SOLVED]
PHP List,
Thank you to everyone who helped out.
I'm happy to report that the issue is solved, mainly with the help of my
local LUG. I am getting nice friendly URLs, so mod_rewrite seems to be
working.
The solution was almost entirely to do with getting Apache working. Once
I had the URLs correctly pointing to my index.php file, then
manipulating $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] was a snap.
The trickiest part for me was that on my own Apache server, mod_rewrite
was not enabled.
In any case, for my own reference as well as others, although the path
to the answer was a little stumbly, here are the steps that I think
ultimately lead to getting everything to work. This is entirely to do
with setting up Apache to handle friendly URLS, but hopefully will be of
use to PHP developers.
1. # sudo a2enmod rewrite
2. Confirm that the rewrite.load file is in /etc/apache2/mods-enabled
Currently I have the following files in that directory:
cgi.load php5.conf php5.load rewrite.load
3. # sudo gedit /etc/apache2/sites-available/default
Find where it says:
Directory /var/www/
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
allow from all
And change AllowOverride None to AllowOverride all. (I noticed that
None was in upper case, and all was lowercase. Don't know if case is
important, but this is the way that it worked for me).
Some sites said to edit /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default, or
sometimes default-000, but they are just symlinks to
/etc/apache2/sites-available/default (at least in my case).
4. # sudo gedit /etc/apache2/httpd.conf
Add the following lines:
IfModule mod_rewrite.c
RewriteEngine On
/IfModule
No other editing of httpd.conf was necessary, despite some sites that
said to use LoadModule.
It should be noted, though, that even though mod-rewrite is working, it
isn't listed when I run /usr/sbin/apache2 -l. I don't know if that's
odd behaviour or not, just that it seemed like it was supposed to be
listed there.
5. Reload the apache modules and restart Apache.
# sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 force-reload
# sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
6. Create an .htaccess file (if there isn't one already) in the
directory where one wants to create user friendly URLS, and add the
following:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*) index.php
These rules say that if the file or directory named in the URL is real,
then go there. Otherwise, go to the index file for processing. At least
that's what it seems to do. I didn't write it, so I can't assure anyone
of the correctness of the syntax.
It should be noted, though, that even though mod-rewrite is working, it
isn't listed when I run /usr/sbin/apache2 -l. I don't know if that's
odd behaviour or not, just that it seemed like it was supposed to be
listed there.
If anyone can see problems in the above, or if I've misunderstood some
part, please let me know.
Thanks to the PHP list for their ever-present help and support.
--
Dave M G
--
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Re: [PHP] Creating User Friendly URLS
As a general rule, if you want to see everything useful that is available to you in your script: http://php.net/phpinfo In particular, this will show you the PATH_INFO if it's there, and the REQUEST_URI if that's there, and... If neither of those are available, I don't think you'll be able to do what you want... It could just be a server configuration issue. PHP doesn't really decide what to put in $_SERVER. Your web server puts a bunch of stuff in the environment SERVER variable, and PHP just passes the buck on to you to do something useful with it. Or so I understand it. On Thu, August 17, 2006 9:43 am, Dave M G wrote: PHP List, My goal is to create user and search engine friendly URLs like: mysite.com/my_web_page_title Instead of: mysite.com/index.php?pageID=1 I asked about this before: http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=php-generalm=113597988027012w=2 And there is this helpful tutorial: http://agachi.name/weblog/archives/2005/01/30/rewriting-dynamic-urls-into-friendly-urls.htm Both of which refer to a variable called $_SERVER['PATH_INFO']. But, in the php.net manual, in the predefined variables page, 'PATH_INFO' is only obliquely referenced in the $_SERVER variable description, under the 'PATH_TRANSLATED' element. When I've tried echoing out the contents of $_SERVER['PATH_INFO'], I get nothing. I'm trying to set it so that pages are named according to their title in my MySQL database. So my script will pull my_web_page_title out of the URL, match that against the database, and then display the appropriate contents. I thought I could do this by simply making my link into: a href=index.php/my_web_page_titleMy Web Page Title/a And then stripping out the index.php, and using the remainder for both the URL and the database lookup. But, while I'm sure there are more steps than that, I'm halted initially because I'm not sure where in the $_SERVER array my URL is being stored. Any advice on how to proceed here would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. -- Dave M G -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php -- Like Music? http://l-i-e.com/artists.htm -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Creating User Friendly URLS
On Thursday 17 August 2006 09:43, Dave M G wrote: PHP List, My goal is to create user and search engine friendly URLs like: mysite.com/my_web_page_title Instead of: mysite.com/index.php?pageID=1 I asked about this before: http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=php-generalm=113597988027012w=2 And there is this helpful tutorial: http://agachi.name/weblog/archives/2005/01/30/rewriting-dynamic-urls-into-f riendly-urls.htm Both of which refer to a variable called $_SERVER['PATH_INFO']. But, in the php.net manual, in the predefined variables page, 'PATH_INFO' is only obliquely referenced in the $_SERVER variable description, under the 'PATH_TRANSLATED' element. When I've tried echoing out the contents of $_SERVER['PATH_INFO'], I get nothing. I'm trying to set it so that pages are named according to their title in my MySQL database. So my script will pull my_web_page_title out of the URL, match that against the database, and then display the appropriate contents. I thought I could do this by simply making my link into: a href=index.php/my_web_page_titleMy Web Page Title/a And then stripping out the index.php, and using the remainder for both the URL and the database lookup. But, while I'm sure there are more steps than that, I'm halted initially because I'm not sure where in the $_SERVER array my URL is being stored. Any advice on how to proceed here would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. -- Dave M G Richard has a good article related to this. Mostly it's about how to force a download with a correct filename, but the last part of the article should get you pointed in the right direction if you don't want to use mod_rewrite with apache. http://richardlynch.blogspot.com/ -- Ray Hauge Programmer/Systems Administrator American Student Loan Services www.americanstudentloan.com 1.800.575.1099 -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Creating User Friendly URLS
At 11:43 PM +0900 8/17/06, Dave M G wrote: PHP List, My goal is to create user and search engine friendly URLs like: mysite.com/my_web_page_title Instead of: mysite.com/index.php?pageID=1 The ? doesn't cut it for SE's. I thought I could do this by simply making my link into: a href=index.php/my_web_page_titleMy Web Page Title/a And then stripping out the index.php, and using the remainder for both the URL and the database lookup. Why not just place all your pages inside folders with the names you want and then link to the folders? For example: a href=mysite.com/my_web_page_titleMy Web Page Title/a Where my_web_page_title is the name of a folder that contain an index.php that produces the page. tedd ps: This isn't a php thing, but rather basic html -- unless I'm not understanding what you want. -- --- http://sperling.com http://ancientstones.com http://earthstones.com -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Creating User Friendly URLS
1. assign a 'page' a 'friendly url' - this is probably done in your CMS 2. write a routine that will generate a 'friendly url' for a given 'page' in your cms; this allows you to stick the 'friendly urls' in a menu for instance. 3. write a routine for taking any given url and trying to match it against a 'page' in your CMS (let it return the page data and/or id if successful) 4. setup your webserver to redirect non-existent urls to a handler script that will use the routine from 3 to try and find the correct page. sticking to apache this can be done in at least 2 ways: a, use mod_rewrite - to which I can only say RTFM ;-) b, use the ErrorDocument directive, which would look something like: ErrorDocument 404 /myhandler.php 5. write a 'handler script' as mentioned in 4. if your are using ErrorDocument you will need to output a 'Status: 200' header if your handler finds a page matching the requested url. 6. do var_dump($_REQUEST, $_SERVER) in your 'handler script' to find out exactly what info you have to play with - you should be able to find everything you need. Dave M G wrote: PHP List, My goal is to create user and search engine friendly URLs like: mysite.com/my_web_page_title Instead of: mysite.com/index.php?pageID=1 I asked about this before: http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=php-generalm=113597988027012w=2 And there is this helpful tutorial: http://agachi.name/weblog/archives/2005/01/30/rewriting-dynamic-urls-into-friendly-urls.htm Both of which refer to a variable called $_SERVER['PATH_INFO']. But, in the php.net manual, in the predefined variables page, 'PATH_INFO' is only obliquely referenced in the $_SERVER variable description, under the 'PATH_TRANSLATED' element. When I've tried echoing out the contents of $_SERVER['PATH_INFO'], I get nothing. I'm trying to set it so that pages are named according to their title in my MySQL database. So my script will pull my_web_page_title out of the URL, match that against the database, and then display the appropriate contents. I thought I could do this by simply making my link into: a href=index.php/my_web_page_titleMy Web Page Title/a And then stripping out the index.php, and using the remainder for both the URL and the database lookup. But, while I'm sure there are more steps than that, I'm halted initially because I'm not sure where in the $_SERVER array my URL is being stored. Any advice on how to proceed here would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
RE: [PHP] Creating User Friendly URLS
tedd mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] on Thursday, August 17, 2006 8:29 AM said: And then stripping out the index.php, and using the remainder for both the URL and the database lookup. Why not just place all your pages inside folders with the names you want and then link to the folders? Because he said database lookup and that means there are no files to be put into any folders. Chris. -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
