Fake directories.. how do they do that?

[richblend]

I was just browsing faceparty.com, and noticed that you can get to a profile page by just going www.faceparty.com/username.

SURELY they havent got a directory for every member; thats like, over a million direcotries, right in the root directory of the site. Im trying to do a similar thing, and im thinking somehow when this happens, its passing the username as a variable to index.php (or maybe asp in faceparty's case) and then it can redirect to the real page accordingly. Any suggestions? Im baffled.

[yelvington]

Probably with Apache's mod_rewrite.

http://httpd.apache.org/docs-2.0/misc/rewriteguide.html

[zalath]

mod_rewrite's a sure choice. I've done a fake directory (/images) myself, the actual content comes from a mysql server.

[m_tt]

There are 2 ways that I know of doing this...

1. Create a symlink with apache
2. Htaccess. You can setup htaccess to see directories as variables.

IE: yoursite.com/yourvariable/

will load up that URL but yoursite.com/index.php will see that folder (yourvariable) as a variable.

[superwormy]

You could also do this with 404 errors, ie when the user requests a page that isn't there, send them to a custom CGI ( or PHP ) 404 page, which parses the REQUEST_URI variable and sends them the correct content.

[Sxooter]

They're using this:

http://httpd.apache.org/docs-2.0/mod/mod_alias.html#aliasmatch

It's real simple to do, and works a charm.

[richblend]

um. yea. that looks cool, just that I have no idea about apache kinda stuff... Im with a regular small-medium hosting plan. I know it runs on apache, but can i use stuff like that? Dont worry, im not looking for a massive explanation, i just have no idea what all thia apche stuff is, who can configure it, how you do it etc.......

[stew1]

For starters try doing a

<?=phpinfo()?>

Look in the Apache section and then under loaded modules for 'mod_rewrite'

If you've got mod_rewrite in there - then you are in business

Try this simple example

Put the following in a .htaccess file...

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^users\/(.*)$ users.php?user=$1

What this is saying on the left-hand side
1) Match any url that starts /users/ - start denoted with ^
2) Any thing after until the end of the line (.) - end denoted by $ - bung it in the variable $1 subsequent (.) in this simple example would be $2 $3 etc

What the right had side of the expression is saying take the $1 and substitute it in the url users.php?user=$1

So if you had a script users.php thus

<? echo $user; ?>

Calling the script like this...

http://domain.com/users/bob

would be the same as...

http://comain.com/users.php?user=bob

They should both output 'bob' (honest)

[tuf-web_co_uk]

hey i used that script for my site cos it's cool

and when i use

http://localhost/users/bob

it doesnt show anything on my page but when i use

http://localhost/users.php?user=bob

it works

i have only

<? echo $user; ?>

on my page

any suggestions?!

and i have mod_rewrite loaded

[stew1]

Errm sorry yeah, I've edited the RewriteRule above

This should work now

[tuf-web_co_uk]

the file itself users.php is being loading because i added a html <title></title> to test it

but i still dont seem to be getting any data echoed onto my page

such as the variable $name from

RewriteRule ^users\/(.*)$ users.php?name=$1

[ESCForums_com]

how would you add another variable to that?

users.php?name=$1&picture=$2

..btw Stew1, your last posts code works like a charm 😉

Thanks,

[stew1]

How about

^users\/(.*)\/(.*)$ users.php?name=$1&picture=$2

http://domain.com/users/bob/mugshot

could be translated as

http://domain.com/users.php?name=bob&picture=mugshot

Remember these are very simple examples, see the Apache docs and find out how funky you can get with mod_rewrite. There is a plethora of possibilities when you start using RewriteConditions and more complex regexes (though I claim to be no expert)

I've used it so far to great effect for creating search-engine friendly URL's and getting a static version of a database site for a CD using a site ripper

[richblend]

hmmmmm. well, all the advice has been wicked so far, i read up on what the hell .htaccess was, and got on with it. But i have the same problem as tuf-web.co.uk....

It redirects to the right page, but its not passing the variable correctly. Is there maybe a way to register these variables, sort of in the same way you might use $HTTP_GET_VARS for example?

Thanks for all the help so far!

[richblend]

well, imagine that. i think i solved it in my own silly way.

I just put in the users.php file, insead of:

echo $user;

i put:

echo $REQUEST_URI;

This prints "/users/bob" to the browser. only takes some pretty simple string manipulatuion to extract "bob" out of there as the value of the variable.

not particularly tidy, but it works in my case, as i know what variable im expecting.

can anyone help in working out why the original method didnt work though?

[ESCForums_com]

Check this Out:

http://www.crazyphil.net/download/CrazyPhil/welcome.gif

this is actually:

http://www.crazyphil.net/df.php?user_name=CrazyPhil&filename=welcome.gif

All of this was derived from stew1's help 😛

This is my .htaccess code 😉

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^download\/(.*)\/(.*)$ df.php?user_name=$1&id=$2