URL Question

[timmah1]

I have a photo hosting site, and when the user signs up, they get their own domain, kinda like myspace

What I want know is, when someone types in the url of a person (ie http://www.domainname.com/user), how would PHP know to pull information associated with that user?

[joquius]

well all you need is to get the domain name from a http request, and match that with the database information. Lets says johnnysdomain is in the url requested of your host, you look that up in the database where you inputted the domain name originally.

If you notice:

[code]
$host_name = explode (".", $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']); // quite lazy
[/code]
$host_name[0] or $host_name[1] will get you the domain name and you just have to match that to the database (key 0 may be www, ftp, etc.)

[simcoweb]

Yup, the database query would pull the name from the url with a $_GET statement then use that info in a WHERE clause in the query.

[Caesar]

Best way...let Apache do it. mod_rewrite for the win!

[The Little Guy]

you need a .htaccess file
and in it you would place something like this:
[code]
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^(.+)/$ /user_page.php?username=$1
[/code]

Then in your PHP file just search the database something like this:
[code]
<?php
    $sql = mysql_query("select * FROM users where username='{$_GET['username']}' LIMIT 1");
    while($row = mysql_fetch_array($sql)){
          echo$row['username'];
          echo$row['userid'];
          echo$row['filename'];
    }
?>
[/code]
That is just an example of how to do it, but the .htaccess file is required, and for an .htaccess tutorial, go here: http://corz.org/serv/tricks/htaccess2.php -- its one I really like.

[timmah1]

ok, this still confuses me

When someone signs up, their username is their domain.
If the url that somebody types in is
http://www.domain.com/mysite

How would the site now to pull all the information for the user 'mysite'?

[joquius]

$array = explode ("/", $_SERVER['HTTP_REQUEST']);
$user = $array (count ($array) - 1); // extremely lazy

this is if it's a "shared" domain, with a directory/page

[timmah1]

ok, i'm a dumb ass.

I didn't mean to say their own 'domain', the get their own 'directory', which is a alot different

http://www.domainname.com/directory

How would I pull the username from just typing in the address the url?
The username will always be the directory, in this example, the username is 'directory'

I'm trying to understand this, but for some reason it's not sticking