Forum URL

[Wratox1]

Hello, im going to make a small forum as a school project, i know how to make the forum, but there is one thing im wondering about:

if i have a url like mysite.com/23
is the number "23" like a page of its own?

let me explain, if we take this url for example:

thehelper.net/forums/forumdisplay.php/42-World-Editor-Help

i can add or remove anything after forumdisplay.php/ , as long as the number "42" is still there, i can do like this:

thehelper.net/forums/forumdisplay.php/42-World-Editor-Helpswegaerhaehe

and if i go to that page i still comes to the same page..

how is this done?

how can i get the number? you cant use $_GET[''] right? since its not a variable sent with the GET method.

 

[GetTriggerUnit-]

It's called URL rewriting. Here's a tutorial that demonstrates how to do it on apache.
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/misc/rewriteguide.html

 

[Samuraid]

i can add or remove anything after forumdisplay.php/ , as long as the number "42" is still there, i can do like this:

thehelper.net/forums/forumdisplay.php/42-World-Editor-Helpswegaerhaehe

and if i go to that page i still comes to the same page..

how is this done?

In your example above, $_SERVER['PATH_INFO'] will contain the "/42-World-Editor-Helpswegaerhaehe" part.
Then you can use string parsing or regular expressions to extract the 42.
One of the fastest ways to do this would be:

$number = (int)substr($_SERVER['PATH_INFO'], 1);

It's messy, but it's fast.

If you want something even more powerful, you should try mod_rewrite, as GetTriggerUnit- suggested.

 

[JerseyFoo]

Take it or leave it...

.htaccess

RewriteEngine On

RewriteRule ^([0-9]+)[^.]+$ /index.php?id=$1 [L]

index.php

<?php
$id = $_GET['id'] + 0; // security measure, force integer


?>

This grabs the id number during the rewrite stage and passes it as a parameter, working only on urls that do not contain a '.'. Such as /image.jpg

Of course, storing the uri along with your threads like a title in the database and querying for a match wouldn't require an id in the URL.

 

[Wratox1]

after reading the tutorial GetTriggerUnit gave me and looking on the example JerseyFoo gave me, i still dont understand how the rewrite rule works, could someone explain in more detail? please use JerseyFoo's example and divide the rewrite rule into sections!

 

[Miz]

What small forum system are you using? You may find easily obtainable SEF/SEO (Search Engine Friendly/Search Engine Optimized) plugin or settings. (Or an instructed way of doing it so it will work with your forum's system)

 

[Wratox1]

im not using any forum system, im going to do the code by myself so i learn as much as possible.

 

[GetTriggerUnit-]

forums/forumdisplay.php/42-World-Editor-Help
In the directory "forums" create a file named .htaccess.

RewriteEngine On

RewriteRule ^forumdisplay.php/([0-9]+)[^.]+$ forumdisplay.php?id=$1

^: start of the rule
([0-9]+): number
[^.]+: text
$: end of rule
// the space is the delimitation
$1: ([0-9]+) first data you asked

 

[Wratox1]

i cant get it to work, when i put href on my links should i put "mysite.com/forumdisplay.php?id=12" or "mysite.com/forumdisplay/12"?

Edit: after reading http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/rewrite/intro.html im starting to understand the rewrite rules, and i came up with this(but it doesnt work):

RewriteEngine On

RewriteRule ^forum.php?id=([0-9]+)[^.]+$ forum.php/$1

if i click on a link that has "href=forum.php?id=4"
shouldnt the url in the adress bar be changed to "forum.php/4"?

or am i wrong?

currently i only have a few .php files on my site and all of them are in the same directory, does it matter if there are other .php files in the same directory as forum.php and .htaccess?

Edit2: i was wrong, and now i have this:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteRule ^forum.php/([0-9]+)[^.]*$ forum.php?id=$1

its what GetTriggerUnit gave me in his last post, except that i changed the + after [^.] to *
because somehow when i wrote forum.php/5 as the url, the id i got was 0, and when i wrote forum.php/55 the id i got was 5, so there was something wrong, but i fixed it with *

anyway, it works now except one thing, when i go to forum.php/"any number" my .css file doesnt "work", why is that? i get the links and everything i wrote in html on forum.php but the css used to make it look pretty is gone! anyone have an solution? this is only thing i need help with now since the rewrite works

Edit3: problem solved, i googled some and found that i could do <link href="/main.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"> instead of <link href="main.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"> and it worked!

thanks for helping me with mod_rewrite! and i really learned something!

+rep for you guys who helped me!