Help with PHP and directories?

[CPlanet]

Hi all,

Brief explaination of what tinyurl is..

Welcome to TinyURL!™
Are you sick of posting URLs in emails only to have it break when sent causing the recipient to have to cut and paste it back together? Then you've come to the right place. By entering in a URL in the text field below, we will create a tiny URL that will not break in email postings and never expires.

I get the whole shortening process but what I don't get is how you can make PHP do http://tinyurl.com/XXXXXXXX

I know the XXXXXXX is randomly generated and checked to ensure there is no duplicate entries, but how does PHP handle it to make sure the user gets redirected to the correct place? Does it create a directory per site? (Doesnt seem quite as knowledgeable as you would have millions of directories..)

Can someone explain how this is handled without having those millions of directories? lol

Thank you 🙂

[madwormer2]

.htaccess will redirect you to Location: http://forwarding.tinyurl.com/redirect.php?num= (and then the code for the site)

This in turn, redirects you using information stored in a database with the code & link, and forwards you using the header('Location: URL');

😛