url variable issue

Mandakins

I'm working with a content management system where all the pages are stored as a single html file. The system calls the position on the page somehow by using ?Category after the url. Now, I'm used to ?Category=CategoryName, but I don't get how just ?Category works.

If I put ?Cat=CategoryName in the url, the page data doesn't pull. But I need to know what category it is. Sooo... any ideas? My alternative is to read through all the pre-existing code and try to figure it out, but I'd rather try something like

If Home {
do something
}

as opposed to the usual:

If Category == "Home" {
do something
}

majik-sheff

The part between the ? and the = becomes a special variable in PHP. in your example this is what your program will see:

$_REQUEST['Cat'] == "CategoryName";

All variables passed in the URL are encapsulated this way. if you had this URL:

foo.com/bar.php?var1=blah&pink=panther&DNC=CNN

PHP would see this:

$REQUEST['var1'] == "blah";
$REQUEST['pink'] == "panther";
$_REQUEST['DNC'] == "CNN";

Read this for more info:
http://us2.php.net/manual/en/language.variables.external.php

Mandakins

In this case though, there is no =
The url is something like www.site.com?Home or www.site.com?Economy

It's like an anchor tag almost. I'm not sure how that works in PHP.

I'd love it if it were ?Cat=Home

So how do I tell PHP what the category is if the variable doesn't have a name in the url?

sarahk

I'd say that the system is creating a variable called $Economy and then going through each of the modules and looking to see if there is a variable with the module name. Just an alternative way of doing it.

What happens when you just go with the flow and do it their way? do you get errors? does it magically work?

which CMS are you using?

Sarah

Mandakins

The variables after the ? are pulling from an html page. It is somehow finding everything inside a <h1></h1> tag and using that. There is no PHP on the page. I'm stymied!