How to get a username in the url after the /? - php

Question

I am using PHP to create a social media platform. I have a fully sizeable page for the user you are viewing that is adjusting by who you are trying to view in the URL. If you go to profile.php?user=(USERNAME) it will display the data of that user.
But I want something extra to that. I do not want my users to have to fill in a difficult URL like that. I want them to be able to type profile/(USERNAME) and that it will show the data of the user they are viewing.
So how can I make it possible that the GET from ?user=(USERNAME) is in the /(USERNAME).
I hope my question is clear. Looking forward to questions or answers.
Kind regards,
Serge

Answer 1

The following should work for you.
Set up an input field and set the value to /profile -> <input value="profile/">, (see below HTML code for example), so that auto populates in the field for the users to type into. Then run your post value through php and check if set, sanitize (see https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.urlencode.php for more info), then build your url, lastly run that through a header redirect to redirect to the profile page.
Example below:
HTML:
<form method="post"><!--// No action needed as we will redirect with php `header()` if submit is pushed. //-->
View Users Profile:
<input type="text" value="profile/" name="searchUser" id="searchUser" ><br><br>
<input type="submit" name="submit" value="Submit">
<?=$url?><!--// Used simply to echo out your url string for testing purposes, if you are testing, simply comment out the header line in the php so the code does not redirect you to the url //-->
</form>
PHP:
$url = null; // Declare an empty variable to display URL for testing purposes
// * Not needed if your not displaying this url to test the output of your url string
// Make sure the $_POST globals are set using isset()
if(isset($_POST['submit']) && isset($_POST['searchUser'])){
// Remove the `profile/` string from the input value so we only have the user being searched
$post = str_replace("profile/","",$_POST['searchUser']);
// More sanitation may be needed depending on what you allow your users to use for usernames
$cleanPost = filter_var ( $post, FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);
// Get the server host
$host = $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'];
// Get the directory
$uri = rtrim(dirname($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']), '/\\');
// Get the root
$root = 'myawesomesocialsite.com';
// Set the path to profile and add the field input from user
$profile = "/profile?user=".$cleanPost;
// Construct the URL using the declared variables
$url = "http://$host$uri/$root$profile";
// Redirect user using header()
// Comment the header("Location: $url"); out to test the output of your $url string if you're getting errors with redirect
header("Location: $url");
exit();
}
Using a function:
function constURL($root, $dir){
$post = str_replace("profile/","",$_POST['textInput']);
$cleanPost = filter_var ( $post, FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);
$host = $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'];
$uri = rtrim(dirname($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']), '/\\');
$urlPost = "?user=".$cleanPost;
$url = "http://$host$uri/$root$dir$urlPost";
header("Location: $url");
exit();
}
// USE FUNCTION
// Make sure you set the values for root and dir
if(isset($_POST['submit']) && isset($_POST['searchUser'])){
$root = 'myawesomesocialsite.com';
$dir = "/profile";
constURL($root, $dir);
}