Codeigniter routes and mod rewrite - php

Question

for some reasons i've been having problems with mod rewrite, i have the index.php removed from the url ok but when i try to do the same for profiles it shows some contact webmaster page.
Now i'm taking the routes option but i have a little problem.
My url is http://website.com/user/profile/user_profile/username
I have this in my routes
$route['profile/(:any)'] = 'user/profile/user_profile';
So when i type in website.com/profile/username, it works fine. My question is, what if i want to get rid of the /profile as well and have website.com/username, how do it go about it with routes?
Just incase, i might as well put my trail with modrewrite on here so all you brilliant minds can tell me where i'm going wrong.
Options FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond $1 !^(index\.php|images|css|javascript|cron|sit-env|robots\.txt)
RewriteCond $1 !^(index\.php|javascript|sit-env|robots\.txt)
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php/$1 [L]
RewriteCond $1 !^(index\.php|images|css|javascript|cron|sit-env|robots\.txt)
RewriteCond $1 !^(index\.php|javascript|sit-env|robots\.txt)
RewriteRule ^([0-9a-zA-Z]+)([\/]?)$ /user/profile.php/user_profile/$1 [L]
Thanks in advance :)

Answer 1

I simply used the 404_override method to capture any routes not already defined in CodeIgniter and then done a database look up before showing the 404 page.
My example is actually for a CMS however it could easily be changed to suit your requirement.
public function error_404()
{
$Path = trim(uri_string(), '/');
$this->load->model('page_model');
$Page = $this->page_model->GetByPath($Path);
if(empty($Page))
{
$ViewData = array
(
'PageTitle' => 'Error 404'
);
$this->load->view('error_404', $ViewData);
return;
}
else
{
$ViewData = array
(
'PageTitle' => $Page->Title,
'Keywords' => $Page->Keywords,
'Description' => $Page->Description,
'CurrentPage' => $Page->Path,
'Page' => $Page
);
$this->load->view('generic', $ViewData);
}
}
Within my application/config/routes.php file, I simply put
$route['404_override'] = 'controller/error_404';
replacing controller with the controller that contains the error_404 action.
You could use the segments collection to find the username passed to www.domain.com/username failing that, in line with your original request:
$route['profile/(:any)'] = 'user/profile/user_profile/$1';
The above will route www.domain.com/profile/abc123 to www.domain.com/user/profile/user_profile/abc123
Hope this helps?

Answer 2

If you go the routes way, you could have it like this.
$route['(:any)/'] = 'user/profile/user_profile';
But be aware that rules are evaluated top to bottom. Keep it at the end, so if none of your site routes work, it will try to redirect it to the user_profile controller.
The main con you have with this is that any strange url that your users run will be interpreted as a possible user. And if someone named forum wants to see his profile he'll probably get redirected to a forum if theres one.