Passing a value without the variable name

showman

Hi All,

I hope someone here can either provide an answer or head me in the right direction on this matter. I've been trying for weeks to figure out how to include a value in a URL, without having to have the variable named along with it.

here is what I have

http://www.m2m-lucky13.com/?ig=20721

here is what I want

http://www.m2m-lucky13.com/20721/

And I know it can be done using an .htaccess file, because I use it in a few other applications, where it extracts the 20721 from the end of it and assigns it to the variable named in the .htaccess file.

Here is the code for doing that:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^{([^/]+)/(.*)$} $2?pid=$1

And the 20721 ends up as the value in the variable $pid

PROBLEM IS:

I can't make it work when using frames... Now, I don't know what the problem is except that the Rewrite, from what I understand effectively moves back one level in the url, while extracting the value of the variable. That apparently is causing the problems with the Frames, and confusing the frames as much as it is confusing me..

Can anyone help me out in this endeavor? The program is working fine, and is very functional with the /?ig=20721 but I'd like to change it, and would also like to know the answer for future programs.

Thank you in advance for your help.

BTW, I am using PHP/MySql with Linux

Douglas

daphreeek

thats nice and easy - only you need it to be like this:

http://www.m2m-lucky13.com/article/20721/ (use what ever where article is)

I tried to figure it our without the article bit but couldn't - maybe you can.

anyways - now make a file called article (a php file but with no extension) and edit it in notepad (or editor of choice)

<?php
$expl = explode("/article/",$HTTP_SERVER_VARS["REQUEST_URI"]);
$tmp = $expl[1];
$expl = explode("/",$tmp);
$catagory = $expl[0];
$article_id = $expl[1];

echo "$catagory: $article_id";
?>

In the example above, I get 2 variables, $catagory and $article_id. The link looks like this:

http://blah.com/article/php_tutorials/1834

and it goes to the php_tutorials section (so you can customize each section), article 1834 (could be a word if you wanted - but I use a db and that is the id of the article)

Then in .htaccess put this in:

<FilesMatch "^article$">
ForceType application/x-httpd-php
</FilesMatch>

Thats it 🙂 Now of course you dont actually have to call it article, but I think its a good use.

The best parts of this are:
1) that users see better structure in the links and can see where they are
2) if you move files around on your site, you just change the article file and all your links are still the same (great for bookmarks)
3) search engines will index every page (they dont index pages with parameters on the end)

Have fun
- Matt