Clean way to write urls instead of concatenation

Question

I have been finding myself doing URLs like this:

$link = base_url('post') . '/' . $post_id . '/' . $slug . '/page/' . $page_num;

To form http://example.com/post/10/some-post-name/page/1

Needless to say, it's pretty messy, but I can't think of an alternative? Is there a better way write links with variables in it?

I am using Codeigniter as a framework if there is a solution involving it.

Sprintf http://php.net/manual/en/function.sprintf.php is good — Raekye, Dec 05 '12 at 22:13
Double quotes look the best in my opinion, and are the fastest of all alternatives....only your code beats double quotes in speed. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3316060/single-quotes-or-double-quotes-for-variable-concatenation — Joel Mellon, Dec 05 '12 at 23:23
heh - its actually easier to read then any of the posted alternatives - and its the fastest. but yes to using site_url(), that was a good catch -- and double quotes would read a little easier. — cartalot, Dec 06 '12 at 20:22

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 05 '12 at 22:18

You have a few ways:

First, via sprintf:

sprintf('%s/%s/%s/page/%s', base_url('post'), $post_id, $slug, $page_num);

Or via an array implode:

implode('/', array(base_url('post'), $post_id, $slug, 'page', $page_num));

Or if you put all your values into variables, you can take advantage of string interpolation.

$url = ...;
...
"$url/$post_id/$slug/page/$page_num";

The last one is longer when you take into account the variable assignment block, but it combines succintness with readability.

The last one is also undoubtedly the fastest. http://micro-optimization.com/string-concatenation-with-double-quotes-vs-sprintf — Joel Mellon, Dec 05 '12 at 23:21

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 05 '12 at 22:15

2

Use sprintf:

$link = sprintf('%s/%d/%s/page/%d', base_url('post'), $post_id, $slug, $page_num);

answered Dec 05 '12 at 22:15

aularon

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Brendan · Answer 3 · 2012-12-05T22:28:14.760

You could do something like this:

$link = site_url("post/{$post_id}/{$slug}/page/{$page_num}");

You really should be using site_url() instead of base_url() for CI links. base_url() is meant for non-CI assets, like images and css.

site_url() will point to the correct front controller path, so you can update your configuration at will, and everything using that to build paths will update accordingly.

I revised my answer. Use the curly brace notation and avoid using extra functions. You can pass an array of arguments to the function, like so:

$link = site_url(array('post', $post_id, $slug, 'page', $page_num));

But working with arrays is slower. This can be useful if you need to dynamically build the url, though.

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Dec 05 '12 at 23:01

You could do it the old fashioned way with a function!

function buildlink($base_url,$post_id,$slug,$page_num)
{
  return $base_url . '/' . $post_id . '/' . $slug . '/page/' . $page_num;
}

call it like this

$link = buildlink(base_url('post') ,$post_id, $slug ,$page_num);

but maybe i'm missing something

Clean way to write urls instead of concatenation

4 Answers4