replace a query string with a path

[Anon]

how can I replace a query string with a pathlike structure (without actually having to create any directories)?

                        For example: 

                        Replace: 

                        http://www.whatever.com/show.php?show=someuser

                        with: 

                        http://www.whatever.com/someuser

                        is this possible? how? 

                        thanks all.. 

                        Arturo 

                        _________________ 
                        Insignis Araneum Dominus

[Anon]

How do you mean?

I mean, if you just wanna remove that part of the string from that query, just put something like this in,

$link = str_replace("show.php?show=", "", "http://www.whatever.com/show.php?show=someuser");

Is this what you mean?

Not sure what you are trying to do.

Sorry if I wasn't much help,
-Travis

[Anon]

Thanks Travis, what I need to do is give some users "easy-to-remember" addresses to dynamically generated webpages, also most search engines will not index an address with a query string, so I need to remove a query string as in the above example... If I type in the address bar (or click on a link) :

http://www.zugzugzug.com/username

this will be the same as typing (without the above path even existing in the server):

http://www.zugzugzug.com/show.php?show=username

hmmm.....I hope I did not confuse you further... Lol English is not my native languaje 🙂)

Arturo

Travis Simpson wrote:

How do you mean?

I mean, if you just wanna remove that part of the string from that query, just put something like this in,

$link = str_replace("show.php?show=", "", "http://www.whatever.com/show.php?show=someuser");

Is this what you mean?

Not sure what you are trying to do.

Sorry if I wasn't much help,
-Travis

[bfinucan]

Hello,
The following is untested theoretical code. But it may very well work without a problem.

Assuming that you may do this kind of thing based on other parameters such as product, company, etc., you will create a page specifically as a "router" for username queries. We'll create a directory called user/ and make its index page our router.

Since you want to have a URL like http://mysite.com/user/msmith translate into http://mysite.com?user=msmith, you will first parse out the username portion of the URL. To do this, use a combination of substr and strrpos.

$user = substr($REQUEST_URI, strrpos("/", $REQUEST_URI));

This should grab the username from the end of your url.

Now you simply have to use a Header redirect to send them to the appropriate page with the appropriate querystring in place.

header ("Location: /index.php?user=msmith");

I hope that is something similar to the solution you are looking for.

[bfinucan]

Hello,
Forgot to mention. If you will not be parsing out any other parameter besides username, you can do the URL parsing on your default 404 error page. You should be able to indicate a particular 404 page with an .htaccess file if you're not running your own server.

This way, a URL like http://mysite.com/msmith can be resolved to the URL /index.html?user=msmith.

[Anon]

Thanks brandon... this was what I needed.

Arturo