Parsing URL in PHP

benrose111488 · 10-11-2005, 05:35 PM

Hey all

I want a feature on my website which will be easier to explain through examples:

If someone visits http://profile.speakfree.us/123456
I want the profile of the user with userid (in a MySQL table) 123456 to appear

If someone visits http://profile.speakfree.us/benrose111488
I want the profile of the user with that username (same place) to appear

Essentially, when someone types in either of these, I need to figure out a way to get the part past the "/" but before anything else (such as a ?) and assign that value to a variable.

But I have no idea how to do this since I always get a 404 when trying to reach those URLs since the server treats them as directories.

Any suggestions? Thanks much.

--Ben Rose

clb · 10-11-2005, 07:03 PM

I presume they are files as opposed to directories?

if they are files you will need to use a page.php?var=12345 querystring method to get the variable. If they are actually directories then try putting an index.php page inside, and using that to parse the URL, possibly using the __FILE__ constant.

benrose111488 · 10-11-2005, 08:55 PM

They are neither files or directories. I want the user to be able to put that into their browser and have thet bring them to the correct file with the correct value filled in in the ?var=xxx

clb · 10-12-2005, 02:15 AM

My apologies, I misunderstood your first post. You need a script in the directory to handle the string.

If you place an index.php file into the directory you can do what you want by using the url http://path.to.domain/dir/?xxxxxxx
To do this you need to use the following code to grab the data:

PHP Code:


			
$string = $HTTP_SERVER_VARS['QUERY_STRING'];

echo $string;

Let me know if there are any problems, but this should be what you need.

benrose111488 · 10-12-2005, 10:35 AM

But I don't want that question mark to be there. I know how to get vars in the URL but I want them to just be able to put in the username after the slash. What about an error:404 page that will direct them to the correct page?

Hko · 10-12-2005, 11:28 AM

PHP Code:


			
<html>

<head>

    <title>Test URL-parsing</title>

</head>

<body>

<h2>Test URL-parsing</h2>

<?php

    $url = "http://". $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'] . $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];

    echo '<b>Full URL</b>: '. $url .'<br />';

    $part = parse_url($url);

    echo '<b>Protocol: </b>'. $part['scheme'] .'<br />';

    echo '<b>Host: </b>'. $part['host'] .'<br />';

    echo '<b>Path: </b>'. $part['path'] .'<br />';

    echo '<b>Query: </b>'. $part['query'] .'<br />';

?>

</body>

</html>

deiussum · 10-12-2005, 12:12 PM

If you are using Apache and have access to the config file, an alternate option might be to look into putting some form of directory handler in. I haven't ever done this myself so I don't know the exact syntax, but it's something you could investigate. You might need to have a subdirectory to specify for the handler, like users. So if you go to anything underneath the http://yourserver.com/users/ directory, it would get passed through a handler of your choice.

Something like so in your apache config for instance:

Code:

<Location /users>
    SetHandler Your-handler
</Location>

Disclaimer: I know nothing about adding new handlers in apache so the above might not even work, but it is something you could investigate further.