How can I enforce a descriptive URL with CodeIgniter? - php

Question

It's possible this question exists elsewhere, and if so, I apologize. After searching for an hour without success, I can't help but think I'm on the wrong track.
Essentially what I am looking for is a method to enforce a description or title in a page's URL. I am using CodeIgniter, so it is pretty simple to make a pretty URL go where ever I wish.
I could have:
http://mysite.com/controller/function/what-ever-i-want/can-go-here
and it will always go to:
http://mysite.com/controller/function/
with the variable values what-ever-i-want and can-go-here
What I would like is for the URL to be automatically rewritten to include the title if only the controller/function is given.
So, if someone went to:
http://mysite.com/controller/function/
it should automatically rewrite the url as
http://mysite.com/controller/function/a-more-descriptive-title/
A great example of the functionality that I am talking about is the SO URL. if you go to https://stackoverflow.com/questions/789439 it will automatically rewrite it to https://stackoverflow.com/questions/789439/how-can-i-parse-descriptive-text-to-a-datetime-object
I suspect that mod_rewrite is involved, but I would like to come up with the solution that works most gracefully with CodeIgniter.
I am very new to the pretty-url scene and desperately call upon the advice of someone with more experience. Thanks in advance for any help given!

Answer 1

I used Fiddler2 to see how Stackoverflow does this.
Part of the respnse from http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12205510/
HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Location: /questions/12205510/how-can-i-enforce-a-descriptive-url-with-codeigniter
Vary: *
Content-Length: 0
So basically when we go to controller/function/ we need to redirect user to controller/function/my-awesome-title. I've written simple controller that does just that:
<?php if ( ! defined('BASEPATH')) exit('No direct script access allowed');
class Controller extends CI_Controller
{
protected $_remap_names = array();
function __construct()
{
parent::__construct();
$this->_remap_names['func'] = "My Awesome Title";
}
function _remap($method, $arguments)
{
if(
isset($this->_remap_names[$method])
&& sizeof($arguments) == 0
&& method_exists($this, $method)
)
{
$this->load->helper("url");
$title = str_replace(" ", "-", $this->_remap_names[$method]);
$title = strtolower($title);
$url = strtolower(__CLASS__)."/$method/$title";
$url = site_url($url);
// if you dont want to have index.php in url
$url = preg_replace("/index\.php\//", "", $url);
header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
header("Location: $url");
header("Vary: *");
}
else
{
call_user_func_array(array($this,$method), $arguments);
}
}
function func()
{
echo "<h1>";
echo $this->_remap_names[__FUNCTION__];
echo "</h1>";
}
};
Docs for CodeIgniters _remap function can be found here in Remapping Function Calls section.

Answer 2

I don't use CodeIgniter, but you should be able to place code in a controller's __construct, or in some kind of pre-action event if CI has those.
You just look up the appropriate URL for the entity being viewed and do a 301 redirect if necessary.