making search engine friendly URLs

rageh

Hi all

To make my URLs search engine friendly, I would like to ask the forum members how you could transform your dynamic URLs from being
www.mysite.com/artilces/code.php?action=read&articleID=234
To
www.mysite.com/articles/code.php/9/11/4 or soemthing similar. This URL is relatively easier to remember than the above-mentioned one. I appreciate any help

Thanks

m_tt

Research the module "mod_rewrite" for apache and htaccess.. the answer is there : )

majiclab

mod_rewrite is a very powerful mod, sometimes too powerful... 🙂

If you don't have access to Apache config and what not, another possiblity would be to do a little playing around with server vars.

For example, this link:

code.php/this/is/a/test

Would return the following in the $_SERVER[ 'PATH_INFO' ] variable:

/this/is/a/test

So, if you know that the URL will always be in the same format, you could do something like:

$forum = split('/', $_SERVER[ 'PATH_INFO' ]);

With the above URL, that would give you an array like:

Array
    (
        [1] => this
        [2] => is
        [3] => a
        [4] => test
    }

Then you could use that array to pull the topic/etc.

Hope that helps!

-Percy

rageh

Thanks majiclab.

i understand whay you suggested but it implies that DB queries take place after the IDs are found out. That is not teh case.

I have the IDs already and I want them converted to /3/4/5/.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance

majiclab

In that case, just do something like this:

I think that's what you are trying to do... ?

Hope that helps.

-Percy

drawmack

in asp on IIS this works

www.domain.ext/script.asp/parameter?

meediake

Is there another way to do it? My server admin has switched off 'PATH_INFO' variable...

seby

does the server have mod_rewrite and is it *nix ?

dalecosp

The classic articles, BTW, are on this site... it was so well received he revisited it later...

http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/tim19990117.php3
http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/tim20000526.php3

rageh

Thanks again majiclab for your suggestion. When I get the URL on screen like this <A hRef="http://domain.com/path/to/link.php/<?= $forum_id ?>/<?= $thread_id ?>/<?= $post_id ?>">Link</A> and the user clicks the link, of course I would need to fetch the forum_id, thread_d and post_id to get the article. One cannot do that as there are no variables to keep IDs in that URL formation you suggested. You see the problem?

If the URL formation was <A hRef="http://domain.com/path/to/link.php?forum_id=$forum_id&thread_id= $thread_id&post_id= $post_id">Link</A> The problem of getting the article from database would have been easy because you have variables in the URL . But that is exactly what I am trying to avoid.

You see my friend?

Can I do this short of mod_rewrite implementation?

Any more suggestions?

dalecosp

Originally posted by rageh
Thanks again majiclab for your suggestion. When I get the URL on screen like this <A hRef="http://domain.com/path/to/link.php/<?= $forum_id ?>/<?= $thread_id ?>/<?= $post_id ?>">Link</A> and the user clicks the link, of course I would need to fetch the forum_id, thread_d and post_id to get the article. One cannot do that as there are no variables to keep IDs in that URL formation you suggested. You see the problem?

If the URL formation was <A hRef="http://domain.com/path/to/link.php?forum_id=$forum_id&thread_id= $thread_id&post_id= $post_id">Link</A> The problem of getting the article from database would have been easy because you have variables in the URL . But that is exactly what I am trying to avoid.

You see my friend?

Can I do this short of mod_rewrite implementation?

Any more suggestions?

If you'll read Tim's articles, you'll see how he used an apache attribute to force execution of one PHP script for the entire site, which deconstructs a query string similar to the first one you think impossible and creates the appropriate page for each request. That's one way it's done.