Displaying dynamic content based on browser location - php

Question

I had an idea of writing a page template in my index.php where the content section of the page will include the content dynamically by determining what url the browser is at and getting the content page based on that. There's a few issues though:
<?php
// /index.php
?>
<!-- html tags and menu/layout divs as needed go here -->
<section id="content">
<?php
function curPageURL()
{
$page = substr($_SERVER["SCRIPT_NAME"],strrpos($_SERVER["SCRIPT_NAME"],"/")+1);
return $page;
}
$page = curPageURL();
switch ($page)
{
case "index.php":
include_once("includes/home.php");
break;
}
?>
</section>
<!-- footer and such goes here -->
Although this works, I'm having trouble applying the concept further. I just can't seem to get my head around how the navigation should work or how to apply this concept to other pages in my site...
If anyone can advise, I'd really appreciate it.

Answer 1

You could use a .htaccess file (put in the same directory as index.php).
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?uri=$1 [L,QSA]
And then in index.php you can get the page with:
$page = $_GET['uri'];
So if you user goes to example.com/home then the page variable will be set to home.