Directories for each row? Easier way?

[clearbreach]

I've done a few completely PHP-based scripted sites and I've always gone with the basic way of displaying pages (from a database) with all the needed information (id, etc) in the url line (for example, mysite.com/article.php?myid=101010).

However, I see a lot more websites doing something like mysite.com/articles/101010 and I was just wondering how something like that actually works. [Is/Did] the script actually creat[ing/e] a directory for each id (or whatever the variable may be), or is there some magic way of transferring to a different page (and have the URL remain the same)?

Just curious.

Many thanks for your help.

[nnichols]

This is done using Apache's mod_rewrite module. It is done to improve the listings the sites get on search engines, as a lot of search engines will ignore any text after the "?" of a URL.

Here is a link to the section of the Apache site devoted to this great module - http://httpd.apache.org/docs/mod/mod_rewrite.html

Hope this helps 😉

[clearbreach]

Wow! Very detailed page! Thank you so much!