I was looking at a few web e-commerce website and noticed that they usually have long URL something like this (taken from an e-commerce site)
https://www.example.com/bsquare-tuxedo-solid-men-s-suit/p/itmejr4zbjt6fr3h?gclid=CjwKEAiAz4XFBRCW87vj6-28uFMSJAAHeGZbXBpy4Rw5UckmBAiPaacHLhr5MbPj4bMxVThaQe5A3xoCIi7w_wcB&pid=SUIEJR4ZAK7FZKRT&cmpid=content_suit_8965229628_gmc_pla&tgi=sem%2C1%2CG%2C11214002%2Cg%2Csearch%2C%2C95089233620%2C1o5%2C%2C%2Cc%2C%2C%2C%2C%2C%2C%2C&s_kwcid=AL!739!3!95089233620!!!g!182171694500!&ef_id=WJitiQAAAfz4lw1Y%3A20170213091758%3As
Generally a router would be
http://www.example.com/controller/method/param1/param2
Then what all codes go up in the longer URL as above and why do a longer version when a short URL can get the same job done?
You can start to read more about get method:
http://www.html-form-guide.com/php-form/php-form-get.html
To send data server side in php you will need to make a request get or post. The second link is an get but rewritten.In the end to access your data the url will be rewritten by the framework you use ( http://www.example.com/controller/method?id1=param1&id2=param2 ). If you do not use any framework you will need to rewrite yourself with .htaccess Usually the second link is used for
more common pages so will be better indexed by google. The first link is for data that is more dynamic and may have more or less parameters, null or "" values etc. And also you do not care to index that page. For exempla a search : http://www.example.com/controller/method?searchValue=&page=1
You also can read more here. It explain how and why we rewrite links: https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/11/introduction-to-url-rewriting/
Related
I am wondering if this is possible with PHP, or if not with ASP since it's relatively similar and I could pick it up quickly. Let's say I have a text input for a user to search a database; as an alternative to using the text field I want a user to be able to go to 'www.examplesite.com/SEARCHTERM'. Is this possible? I've seen it done, but I can't figure out how. Thanks!
You might have to look in to url rewriting based on the server you use.
URL Rewritting
This can be done:
1) Using $_GET
www.examplesite.com/?SEARCH=SerachTermHere
In the page you can get the search variable with $_GET['SEARCH']
2) Using URL Rewritting
Yes that's easily possible. For example if you have apache server then you can enable mod rewrite and write one rule to redirect all such requests to your script in a variable and it will then handle accordingly
It is possible, you have two options.
Using URL Rewritting in your server configuration.
Using $_GET global. Everything in URL after your actual page address is available through $_GET.
This goes a bit beyond your question but might prove to be very useful. Even though it is a framework, you might want to look at Symfony 2 routing for ideas how to implement it. Specifically at "Under The Hood" section. You can even explore their routing code on github. Applications made in it have exactly the form you are searching for (content displaying based on $_GET data).
This question already has answers here:
Closed 10 years ago.
Possible Duplicate:
mod rewrite and query strings
The only way I know to pass parameters in the URL is using the GET method in PHP. But I saw many websites using what seems to be parameters directly in the URL, like this:
http://.../page/2/
In this case, is "page" really a parameter? If so, how is it handled in the code?
Or is this a regular URL of a directory "2" located in a directory "page"? Would it mean that whenever a new post is created, the website creates all the pages and the corresponding directories?
Thanks
This is called url rewriting. Basically this means that you use an apache module to rewrite incoming urls to new urls which are then handled by apache
In your example http://www.test.com/page/2/ is probably rewritten to something like http://www.test.com/?page=2.
If you search the internet for Apache URL rewrite you will get enough results explaining how you can do this.
These are all conventions. GET parameters are not specific to PHP, this is how all browsers encode form data. Java-based webapps use semicolon-separated parameters for example.
You can write a simple layer to convert ?alpha=1&beta=2 to /alpha/1/beta/2 but iw tould be just a cheap gimmick (except in a very few legitimate cases like with Squid caches).
What today's websites do is to use a single entry point pattern. Usually with apache's mod_rewrite, all requests are handled by the index.php and there is a routing facility to choose the adequate handler PHP file for a specific URL scheme. These schemes can be easily defined by Regular Expressions.
So all in all you decide how your URLs are going to look like. It is not an easy task and there are many SEO snake oil salesmen out there who will make you do all kinds of crazy stuff. What a good URL does is to identify a content (document) inside your service and you must use that single URL throughout your service to address it.
And don't forget: cool URLs don't change. You will abandon your current code base in 2 years and rebuild your site from the ground up. Design your URL scheme in a way that makes sense from a logical point of view and not something dependent on your webapp design.
The example you gave is still a GET request.
What you are looking for is URL rewriting.
Consider a situation of a URL as:
www.example.com/softwares/download.php?f=firefox&v=13
It does not look as good as URL:
www.example.com/softwares/firefox/download?v=13
or same download.php used as:
www.example.com/softwares/chrome/download?v=20
How can I achieve this type of URL filtering in PHP?
Some point I want to covered here:
I don't need a folder-hierarchy here like having different folders for /firefox/ and different for /chrome/
There could be only two PHP files (as I wish to) for all products: /software/software-info.php and /software/download.php (already got here).
I am able to put and fetch information from database in PHP but just want to have different link for different product.
I am a Java Web Developer in which you have Filters to get information from a part of link and redirect the request accordingly.
I am new in PHP programming and if this question is already asked or obvious than please pardon me and provide that question link.
This is ideally what you should use url rewriting (mod-rewrite in .htaccess) for.
Your visitor navigates to:
www.example.com/softwares/firefox/download?v=13
or even
www.example.com/softwares/firefox/13/
but your server will understand it as:
www.example.com/softwares/download.php?f=firefox&v=13
You can use htaccess files to do URL rewriting. Essentially this would allow you to take the segments of the url after /software/ and pass them ass parameters to be controlled by the software script.
There are also a bunch of PHP frameworks which use 'routes'. They're based on a similar principal as URL rewriting. I'd recommend Codeigniter as a good starting point - it's a straightforward framework, which plenty of documentation and tutorials.
Good luck!
I'm trying to make a clean url for a blog on a dynamic website, but I think that the problem is that I don't know how to plan the website schema.
I read about how to use mod_rewrite and all I found is how to make "http://www.website.com/?category&date&post-title" to "http://www.website.com/category/date/post-title". that's works o.k for me.
The problem is that If my url looks like "http://www.website.com/blog/?id=34" this method won't work as far as I got it.
So, I have two questions:
1. Is there a way to use mod_rewrite (maybe read from a txt file) to read the post title of my blog and rewrite my url by date and post-title?
2. Should I rewrite my website to query the data from one index file in the homepage and use mod_rewrite to write the nice url? should I query also the date and the title of the post instead just the post ID?
mod_rewrite used to rewrite requests and it has nothing to do with urls. You have to change urls by hands.
yes, it's most common practice, to query the data from one index file
no, you can't use mod_rewrite to write the nice url
yes, an id must be present in the url along with title. your engine will just throw title away and use only id to retrieve an article.
Take a look at SO urls for an example
What you're talking about is commonly referred to as routing and lots of examples exist of different ways to do it with PHP. The most common approach uses the frontcontroller pattern, which means in the simple case rewriting all URLs to a single php file and then having that file determine what content to show dynamically based on the URL.
The most popular PHP frameworks (CakePHP, Symphony, Codeigniter, etc.) all have routing code in them which you might be able to use or might serve as inspiration. Alternatively this article covers lots of the basics if you want to do it yourself: http://www.phpaddiction.com/tags/axial/url-routing-with-php-part-one/
RewriteMap allows you to do all sorts of dynamic rewriting (text file, script, etc).
I am trying to use SEO-friendly URLs for a website. The website displays information in hierarchical manner. For instance, if my website was about cars I would want the URL 'http://example.com/ford' to show all Ford models stored in my 'cars' table. Then the URL 'http://example.com/ford/explorer' would show all the Ford Explorer Models (V-6, V-8, Premium, etc).
Now for the question:
Is mod_rewrite used to rewrite a query string style URL into a semantic URL, or the other way around? In other words, when I use JavaScript to set window.location=$URL, should the URL be the query string version 'http://example.com/page.php?type=ford&model=explorer' OR do I internally use 'http://example.com/ford/explorer' which then gives me access to the query string variables?
Hopefully, someone can see my confusion with this issue. For what it's worth, I do have unique 'slugs' made for all my top level categories (obviously, the site isn't about cars).
Thanks for all the help so far. I got the rewrite working but it is affecting other paths on the site (CSS, JavaScript, images). I using the correct path structure for all these includes (ie '/images/car.png' and '/css/main.css'). Do I have to use an absolute path ('http://example.com/css/main.css') for all files? Thanks!
Generally, people who use mod_rewrite use the terminology like this:
I want mod_rewrite to rewrite A to be B.
What this means is that any request from the outside world for page A gets rewritten to file B on the server.
You want the outside world to see URLs that look like
A) http://example.com/ford/explorer
but your web server wants them to look like
B) http://example.com/page.php?type=ford&model=explorer
I would say you want to rewrite (A) to look like (B), or you want to rewrite the semantic URL into a query string URL.
Since all the links on your page are clicked on by the user and/or requested by the browser, you want them to look like (A). This includes links that javascript uses in window.location. They can and should look like (A).
once you have set up mod_rewrite then your links should point to the mod_rewritten version of the URL (in your example: http://mysite.com/ford/explorer). Internally in your system you will still reference the variables as if they are traditional query string name value pairs though.
Its also worth pointing out that Google is now starting to advocate more logical URLs from a search engine point of view, i.e. a query string over mod rewrite
Does that mean I should avoid
rewriting dynamic URLs at all? That's
our recommendation, unless your
rewrites are limited to removing
unnecessary parameters, or you are
very diligent in removing all
parameters that could cause problems.
If you transform your dynamic URL to
make it look static you should be
aware that we might not be able to
interpret the information correctly in
all cases
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/09/dynamic-urls-vs-static-urls.html
also worth looking at:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/08/optimize-your-crawling-indexing.html