PHP MOD REWRITE? Or something else?

MatthewB

Hi,

Can anyone tell me if the site link

http://www.jiffymix.com/product.php/12/Corn_Muffin_Mix

is a MOD REWRITE?

I should just point out that if you delete parts of the last bit "Corn_Muffin_Mix" the link still works!

ie.
http://www.jiffymix.com/product.php/12/Corn_Mu
http://www.jiffymix.com/product.php/12/Corn_Muffin_M
http://www.jiffymix.com/product.php/12/Co

all go to the same place.

I thought a MOD REWRITE was to change one search engine unfriendly link with a question mark in it to a another single friendly link but this site just has some keywords at the end of their link that do not matter in terms of the URL!

For your information

http://www.jiffymix.com/product.php/1 would go to a different product, since the number defines what is displayed.

Any ideas if this is a MOD REWRITE or something else?

Matthew.

bradgrafelman

MatthewB wrote:
I thought a MOD REWRITE was to change one search engine unfriendly link with a question mark in it to a another single friendly link

Nope. Apache's mod_rewrite is used to rewrite any type of request you want.

MatthewB wrote:
Any ideas if this is a MOD REWRITE or something else?

It's possible, sure.

MatthewB

OK - Thanks. Is there a special 'term' used to describe it when part of the MOD REWRITE link does not do anything (as in the example above)? - As I cannot find anything about it when searching online!

Matt.

bradgrafelman

Not really... the PHP application can do (or not do) whatever it wants with the data passed into it via the URL... it's all just input in the end.

MatthewB

I thought MOD REWRITE was like a REDIRECT in which case the user would have to type the exact URL. Are you suggesting that in MOD REWRITE although in the example below "Corn_Muffin_Mix" is included the user could find the same page with "Corn_M" at the end of the link?

http://www.jiffymix.com/product.php/12/Corn_Muffin_Mix

If so, the I am beginning to understand it. Please confirm if this is true.

Matt.

cretaceous

it's the id number '12' that is getting the page - the "corn-muffin-mix' is just decoration -
try removing all the text..

so I'd guess this is an old site that used to have URLs like :
http://www.jiffymix.com/product.php?page=12

and they have done a quick fix to add some user friendliness
(mod_rewrite can be set to ignore the last item after a slash - in fact it can be set to do pretty much anything you want)
...by 'ignore' I mean it can be set to not pass that element through in the (hidden) query string that it creates

MatthewB

OK - I'll give it a try soon.

If the site I design uses the idea of http://www.jiffymix.com/product.php?page=12 how does the number 12 interact with the template page?

If I did a query in PHP for MySQL asking for Limit=12 then this selects cells with unique reference of 12. But what do I type in the template?

if my extension was product.php?page=appleiphone4

could I do something with the WHERE function whereby my php mysql would ask for data from row with appleiphone4 in it??

Do you advise the LIMIT or WHERE function? Is there a more common way? How does the information get passed from the URL to the template? I do not understand?

Matt.

cretaceous

whoa hold on - you've thrown in some odd assumptions there

a) how does the 12 interact with the template.. what template ??
no need to answer that here but the template is something you are implementing separately

b) don't use "Limit" as a column name in mySql (if that is what you are doing)- LIMIT is a SQL function designed to show only a certain number of rows

WHERE is the function you need

I think you need to start from where you have something basic working and then refine it to what you want