URL conversion

[Joshua4550]

Hey guys,

 

First off, I want to say i'm not sure if this was the right section, but it seemed most appropriate (if what i'm looking for is a PHP application, anyway)

 

The title was the most relevant way I could put it, but his is what i'm looking for:

 

An application which can convert your URL, so say for example a URL on my site was:

http://www.example.com/?thing=this

Then the application would convert the URL to:

http://www.example.com/thing/this

 

I'm sure i've seen this application advertised somewhere before, I just forgot what is was called!

 

Please respond, thanks

[kenrbnsn]

This is done with rewrites in an .htaccess file, so I'm moving it to the correct location. (moving from PHP Applications)

[Joshua4550]

Any idea how?

[cags]

First flip your perspective on your head, the way your application should work is all links on your site should be change to be http://www.example.com/thing/this, then once this is done you use mod_rewrite to rewrite that style of url to the other style (http://www.example.com/?thing=this). Therefore you pages should be coded to work the way it probably currently does (i.e with http://www.example.com/?thing=this links), however all links on your page should be the other type. A simple example of how a RewriteRule...

 

RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/([^/]+)/?$ /?$1=$2

[Joshua4550]

Okay, well my main aim to use this for is for the following:

 

converting-

site.com/site.php?s=ANYTHINGHERE

to-

site.com/ANYTHINGHERE

(And maybe the opposite way around too, so they can type either one)

 

I'm guessing this cannot be too difficult?

 

Thanks!

[cags]

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /site.php?s=$1

[Joshua4550]

Thanks.

 

Is there anything I need to include before that in the .htaccess file? (I read other things on tuorials around the web)

[cags]

You will also need...

 

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on

 

Bare in mind this will forward ALL requests to your site to that page, this will likely screw up all css/images/js files on your site, so this is something to take into account also.

[Joshua4550]

Oh, I thought reqriting worked both ways...

 

In which case, what I actually needed was

site.com/USERNAME

to send them to

site.com/site.php?s=USERNAME

 

Would the concept be the same? And/or still easy?

[Joshua4550]

Oh, and on the redirection - to avoid image/js/css collision, I could just redirect from a URL which doesnt exist, such as site.com/site/WHATEVERHERE which redirects to site.com/site.php?s=WHATEVERHERE

 

This will stopp the collision with css/js/imgs won't it? Since the directory /site doesn't actually exist, it's just what the users will type

[cags]

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /site.php?s=$1

[Joshua4550]

Sorry, i'm REALLY new to this - so PLEASE excuse me. I'm probably going to research some tomorrow, but it's late atm.

 

What exactly would that one do?

[cags]

Redirect all URLs that are not files or directories on the server to that address. Since usernames probably use a specific character set you would really want to be more specific, but it should get you started.

[Joshua4550]

Okay thanks - but one thing. What about if I wanted to do it so they have to put the username after /site

 

such as

 

site.com/site/USERNAME

 

Because i'm guessing i can't just stick /site/ infront of the RegEx?

[cags]

Yes, but without the first forwardslash.

[Joshua4550]

Okay, but it seems to not work.

 

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !-d
RewriteRule site/^(.*)$ /site.php?s=$1

 

http://site.com/site/hi

 

Not Found

The requested URL /site/hi was not found on this server.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

[cags]

The site/ needs to be after the ^ as the ^ character anchors the start of the string.

[Joshua4550]

Works a charm!

 

Thank you very much, thanks for being so calm and understanding, and for helping me!