Custom URL routing with PHP and regex - php

Question

I'm trying to create a very simple URL routing, and my thought process was this:
First check all static URLs
Then check database URLs
Then return 404 if neither exists
The static URLs are easy to do of course, but I'm trying to figure out the best way to do dynamic ones. I would prefer not to have to set a static prefix, despite knowing that it would make this a lot easier to code.
This is what I currently have:
$requestURL = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
if ($requestURL == '/') {
// do stuff for the homepage
}
elseif ($requestURL == '/register') {
// do stuff for registration
}
// should match just "/some-unique-url-here"
elseif (preg_match("/([\/A-Za-z0-9\-]+)/",$requestURL)) {
// query database for that url variable
}
// should match "/some-unique-url/and-another-unique-url"
elseif (preg_match("(^\/[A-Za-z0-9\-]+\/[A-Za-z0-9\-]+)/",$requestURL)) {
// query database for first and second variable
}
else {
// 404 stuff
}
My problem is that if I have "/register" URI, it will match the second elseif statement as well as the regex statement. But I want to avoid having to specifically exclude each static URL from regex statement, such as this:
// should match just "/some-unique-url-here"
elseif ((preg_match("/([\/A-Za-z0-9\-]+)/",$requestURL)) &&
($requestURL !== '/register') &&
($requestURL !== '/')) {
// query database for that url variable
}
What's the easiest way to solve this problem? I'll probably have like 15-20 static URLs, so specifically excluding all of them would be very clunky.

Answer 1

Your problem does not exist. If the first elseif ($requestURL == '/register') matches, all subsequent elseifs on the same level won't get evaluated.
You're already doing it right, just make sure you do the string comparisons (==) first.
On another note, don't reinvent the wheel.
https://github.com/bramus/router
http://toroweb.org/
http://zaphpa.org/