PHP pages with the .php?ID=name code

[navtheace]

Hi guys..

Could someone explain to me how this works you know when you see a page which has the address of say for example

article.php?id_article=59

I understnad the page takes the standard templates to set the page out and then it will take say 59 as does that reference to say the product info it needs from the database or does that take a php/html section of code named 59.php

Hope you can see what I am trying to describe

Ii came about when I looked at this website www.piaa.co.uk and how the asp is set out etc..

[matto]

in most cases, the script gets the (e.g.) ?id_article=59 and loads the article/product data directly from a database ...

$sql = "select title,text,author from article where id=$id_article";

(database selection code skipped)

then, it takes the template and replaces, for example, the keywords <!TITLE>, <!TEXT>, <!AUTHOR> marks with the info previously selected from the database. now it spits out the completed page.

if you don't use a database, you can handle this with, say, textfiles, too ... as far as the desired content can be identified by the id_article.