How is this done with no file extension?

jimmygoon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasmanian_Devil
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Upload

but these do:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tasmanian_Devil&action=edit

particularly:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Whatlinkshere/Tasmanian_Devil

How does it like "parse" the URL and see "Special:Whatlinkshere"

Is this php or apache? either way please link to be discussion on this or tell me how I can implement something like this or similar. thanks.

Ynot

Most likely (although I haven't clicked on any of the links) it's Apache's Mod_rewrite module

This sort of thing is most often used for mobile device's (that don't understand dynamic URL's)

big section on Mod_rewrite in the apache manual
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_rewrite.html

superwormy

It's an apache feature. You can use .htaccess files to sort of 'cast' a specific file to be treated as a PHP file. If you put this in your .htaccess file, then the file named 'myfile' will be treated as a PHP file even without the PHP extension. This file will also be called if you access the page as 'http://example.com/myfile/my_fake_directory' and then you can access 'my_fake_directory' by looking at the $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] variable.

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

Another approach to this is using 'mod_rewrite', if you search Google for that you'll come up with gobs of information.

kakki

aren't there means to start php every time apache has a ".html" file to send out?

Ynot

kakki wrote:
aren't there means to start php every time apache has a ".html" file to send out?

you mean

AddType application/x-httpd-php .html

jimmygoon

superwormy wrote:
It's an apache feature. You can use .htaccess files to sort of 'cast' a specific file to be treated as a PHP file. If you put this in your .htaccess file, then the file named 'myfile' will be treated as a PHP file even without the PHP extension. This file will also be called if you access the page as 'http://example.com/myfile/my_fake_directory' and then you can access 'my_fake_directory' by looking at the $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] variable.

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

Another approach to this is using 'mod_rewrite', if you search Google for that you'll come up with gobs of information.

🙁 I was afraid it was going to be mod_rewrite ... its funny though... I was asking on another forum about how they got phpbb to spit out .html pages and they said mod_rewrite as well... so I'd better learn it 🙂

edit: I just read about the ^myfile$ thing... is that how Wiki does it then... I'm installing Wikimedia to see what it does with out any special .htaccess or Apache rules...

thanks for the assistance guys

LoganK

Mod_rewrite can do lots of things - serve up virtual HTML pages, require no extensions, etc. For example, I can have a directory on my site called "rewrite", and in that directory ONLY one file - index.php. The contents are below:

<?php
echo "{$GET['id']} is really cool, especially when combined with {$GET['id2']}";
?>

So obviously you can do stuff like http://webserver/rewrite/?id=test&id2=test2 or http://webserver/rewrite/index.php?id=test&id2=test2. But with mod_rewrite, I can construct a powerful REGEX query to allow me to do something like this: http://webserver/rewrite/text.html/cool.gif and PHP will see it as "index.php?id=text&id2=cool". That's how powerful mod_rewrite is.

BTW, if you install Wikipedia without mod_rewrite, the installation will notice this and disable Wikipedia's mod_rewrite features.