Facebook Like Custom Profile URL PHP - php

Question

Making a website and I want to put in a custom profile URL for all the users on my site (like facebook).
On my website already, people have a page like http://sitename.com/profile.php?id=100224232
However, I want to make a mirror for those pages that relates to their username. For example, if you go to http://sitename.com/profile.php?id=100224232 it redirects to you http://sitename.com/myprofile
How would I go about doing this with PHP and Apache?

Answer 1

No folders, no index.php
Just take a look at this tutorial.
Edit :
This is just a summary.
0) Context
I'll assume that we want the following URLs :
http://example.com/profile/userid (get a profile by the ID)
http://example.com/profile/username (get a profile by the username)
http://example.com/myprofile (get the profile of the currently logged-in user)
1) .htaccess
Create a .htaccess file in the root folder or update the existing one :
Options +FollowSymLinks
# Turn on the RewriteEngine
RewriteEngine On
# Rules
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php
What does that do ?
If the request is for a real directory or file (one that exists on the server), index.php isn't served, else every url is redirected to index.php.
2) index.php
Now, we want to know what action to trigger, so we need to read the URL :
In index.php :
// index.php
// This is necessary when index.php is not in the root folder, but in some subfolder...
// We compare $requestURL and $scriptName to remove the inappropriate values
$requestURI = explode(‘/’, $_SERVER[‘REQUEST_URI’]);
$scriptName = explode(‘/’,$_SERVER[‘SCRIPT_NAME’]);
for ($i= 0; $i < sizeof($scriptName); $i++)
{
if ($requestURI[$i] == $scriptName[$i])
{
unset($requestURI[$i]);
}
}
$command = array_values($requestURI);
With the url http://example.com/profile/19837, $command would contain :
$command = array(
[0] => 'profile',
[1] => 19837,
[2] => ,
)
Now, we have to dispatch the URLs. We add this in the index.php :
// index.php
require_once("profile.php"); // We need this file
switch($command[0])
{
case ‘profile’ :
// We run the profile function from the profile.php file.
profile($command([1]);
break;
case ‘myprofile’ :
// We run the myProfile function from the profile.php file.
myProfile();
break;
default:
// Wrong page ! You could also redirect to your custom 404 page.
echo "404 Error : wrong page.";
break;
}
2) profile.php
Now in the profile.php file, we should have something like this :
// profile.php
function profile($chars)
{
// We check if $chars is an Integer (ie. an ID) or a String (ie. a potential username)
if (is_int($chars)) {
$id = $chars;
// Do the SQL to get the $user from his ID
// ........
} else {
$username = mysqli_real_escape_string($char);
// Do the SQL to get the $user from his username
// ...........
}
// Render your view with the $user variable
// .........
}
function myProfile()
{
// Get the currently logged-in user ID from the session :
$id = ....
// Run the above function :
profile($id);
}
To conclude
I wish I was clear enough. I know this code is not pretty, and not in an OOP style, but it could give some ideas...