URL rewriting in PHP

Question

Hello everyone i have made this application in PHP with different pages linked together with each other. The application is working fine,but the URL generated are a lot messy and complicated. I have three pages in my application namely

1.index.php (the default file)
2.video.php (the category page)
3.video-detail.php(the page for playing the video)

And the name of the root folder is april

Now the links which are generated for the application are.

http://localhost/april/video?cat_id=2&category=Programming-Language

Considering i am in the second page browsing some category after taking some input from the user in the first page. Now i am trying that the URL should be a lot cleaner than this. For eg: the URL should be in this format .

http://localhost/april/Programming-Language.

I know this task is achieved using .htacess, but i can't really understand it's approach. So any help regarding this topic is highly appreciated.

which framework you are using? – lalithkumar Apr 21 '17 at 12:30 — lalithkumar, Apr 21 '17 at 12:30
Just basic PHP. along with apache server. – Harjeev Singh Apr 21 '17 at 12:30 — Harjeev Singh, Apr 21 '17 at 12:30
you have to make RewriteEngine on in .htaccess – lalithkumar Apr 21 '17 at 12:46 — lalithkumar, Apr 21 '17 at 12:46

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 21 '17 at 12:37

0

http://localhost/april/video?category=Programming-Language&cat_id=2

This can be transformed into: http://localhost/Programming-Language/2

(notice that I shifted cat_id to the end, since I suspected it to be a page number.)

This is accomplished by placing the following in your .htaccess:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^([^/]*)/([^/]*)$ /april/video?category=$1&cat_id=$2 [L]

Obviously you can then pick up the variables via $_GET request ($_GET['category'])

answered Apr 21 '17 at 12:37

sushibrain

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tried this approach . did'nt work out .. this is my htaccess file. – Harjeev Singh Apr 21 '17 at 12:43
@HarjeevSingh For starters, try it without the rest of the stuff in there, also, make sure you use this properly. – sushibrain Apr 21 '17 at 12:45
So i came across this code `RewriteRule ^products/([0-9]+)/?$ show_a_product.php?product_id=$1 ` , but i can't seem to figure what is converting what . I mean the tutorial said that it would look in the URL for a particular pattern and then convert it into the complete messy link. But shouldn't the process be the other way around. – Harjeev Singh Apr 24 '17 at 05:07
With the help of .htaccess file i was able to trim down the URL to `http://localhost/april/24_april/24_april/video-library/2/Programming-Language`. Now the issue is every time i run the application it firsts loads the messy URL , and when i edit it accordingly then the page also gets loaded. So is there any way that the application could directly load the clean URL, rather than the messy URL. – Harjeev Singh Apr 24 '17 at 09:47

lalithkumar · Answer 2 · 2017-04-21T12:44:45.533

0

Do the following changes in the .htaccess

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d 
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}\.php -f 
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.php

If you want more information check these links

1.http://httpd.apache.org/docs/trunk/mod/mod_dir.html#fallbackresource 2.https://mediatemple.net/community/products/dv/204643270/using-htaccess-rewrite-rules

edited Apr 21 '17 at 12:44

answered Apr 21 '17 at 12:37

lalithkumar

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URL rewriting in PHP

2 Answers2