[Resolved] Exposing the URL to the harsh light of day.

aaronk42

So...I have become somewhat familiar with such tasty treats as $SERVER['PHP_SELF'] and $SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], however, I find that these don't return everything I want: is there something similiar that stores/returns the entire URL (domain name included)?

It's the domain name I'm interested in, you see.

Thanks!

steadyguy

There's a big long list of that kind of stuff at: php.net

But I think you may be interested in $SERVER['QUERY_STRING'], and/or $SERVER['SERVER_NAME'].

aaronk42

Ah, $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'] was just what I was looking for. I did, in fact, look at php.net, but must have missed it there, somehow. Thanks, in any case.

"But what the heck does he need this for?" you ask. Well, this is my scheme:

I have a domain name and a web hosting account. What I would like is another domain name and just link it to my already existing web host. No problem. Easy easy easy.

But I want another website. My scheme was to write this php script that would detect the URL from which the user was coming and redirect accordingly. Really simple.

if ($_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'] == domain1) {
// redirect to subdirectory1
} else {
// redirect to subdirectory2
}

Will this work? I can't really test it without buying another domain name.

steadyguy

Actually, I think you want $_SERVER['Referer'] instead ... but note that this relies on outside data, so it might be inaccurate or just plain non-existent.

aaronk42

Yeah, that's what I've been worried about...well, maybe I'll just spend the $10 on a domain and see what happens. :p

superwormy

Actually $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] works quite well for this.

Just be aware that you could get www.domainname.com or JUST domainname.com

Also, SOMETIMES, though not very often, you can actually get cases where the GET or POST request issued by the clietn doesn't have a Host: section, in which case HTTP_HOST will be an empty string... so make sure you let it default to one domain name or the other. Example of a website which uses exactly what you want to do:

www.customsportswear.com
www.teamsportswear.com
www.keywordscentral.com

Those are all off the same 10 a month hosting account, three entirely different sites :-)

nemonoman

Thought I was the only cheapskate doing this. This it the content of my index.php which redirects to the proper index page, and retains the referring URL in the address bar.

<?
$mystring=strtolower ($HTTP_HOST);

$pos = strpos($mystring, "domain2");
if ($pos === false) { // note: three equal signs

header("Location: http://domain1/domain1index.html"); /* Redirect browser */

exit;}

else {

header("Location: http://domain2.com/domain2index.htm"); /* Redirect browser */
exit;}
 ?>

aaronk42

Excellent. Thanks a lot. Just what I was looking and hoping for. 🙂

superwormy

One more thought to add... the only problem with redirects is that search engines see them, and sometimes don't index those pages / think you're trying to trick them.

What I've actually setup on my sites is to have a directory structure like this:

handler.inc.php

www/
www/index.htm

customsportswear/index.htm.php
keywordscentral/index.htm.php
team-sportswear/index.htm.php

index.htm is simply a placeholder, the ONLY thing it does is this:
include ("../handler.inc.php");

The handler.inc.php file then determines, based on the domain name, whether to include customsportswear/index.htm.php, keywordscentral/index.htm.php or team-sportswear/index.htm.php

It's a little bit more work and a few more files, but it avoids having to send header() redirects to the user-agents, little bit more fancy is all.

Every page has a placeholder in the www/ directory and a counterpart in the appropriate domainname folders. I check with is_file() before including any page from the domainname folders, that way I don't need to worry about one domain having a pagename that another domain doesn't.