Converting parameter based URL's to pretty URL's - php

Currently I have url's in this format:
http://www.domain.com/members/username/
This is fine.
However each user may have several 'songs' associated with their account.
The url's for the individual song's look like this:
http://www.domain.com/members/username/song/?songid=2
With the number at the end obviously referring to the ID in the MySQL database.
Using jQuery/javascript, the ID is collected from the URL and the database is then queried and the relevent song/page is rendered.
I would like to change these URL's to the following format instead:
http://www.domain.com/members/username/song/songname/
But I have absolutely no idea how to go about it. I've been doing quite a bit of reading on the subject but haven't found anything quite relevant to my situation.
To further compound the challenge, song names are not always unique. For instance if we image the song name 'hello' it is quite possible that another song may exist in the database with the same name, albeit with a different song ID.
Given the limit information you are recieving in this question I am quite content with more generalised answers, describing the approach to take.
General info:
Apache/Nginx proxy
Backend: PHP
jQuery/Javascript front end

I don't know how do you store songs in the database but an idea:
use URL rewrite to rewrite members/username/song/songname/ to song.php?user=username&song=songname. There are plenty of tutorials here or perhaps try to use an URL rewrite-generator tool.
In song.php, get these GET values. Do a MySQL query where the songname and the username match. Output the result.
Note: it is OBLIGATORY to make that a user can store only one song with a given name. Also, the storing user's name MUST be stored. Else this is impossible.

Simple Apache rewrites, in the main httpd.conf file, or an htaccess file if you don't have access to the main config file should suffice

Related

SEO friendly ModRewrite + data structure

I'm currently in the process of making my URL schemes much more SEO and user friendly.
I have an index page which passes a variable to a video page, which then loads the corresponding item from my MySQL db. In the database I have fields like so:
ID (Key Value) Name Title
--------------- -------------- ---------------
1 Client Video One
At present my URL's are fetched as:
http://example.com/video.php?=20
Through a bit of ModRewrite experimentation I have the much better
http://example.com/video/20/
However, what I'd really like is to have the following:
http://example.com/video/client/
I'm aware that .htaccess can't access my database so can't automatically switch the ID for the Name value.
My thinking is instead of using the key value (ID in this case) I could simply use the 'Name' field. However I have a few concerns doing this:
if my Name data has spaces in the database entry (as some do - for example client one) how will this affect things?
Also, some 'Name' entries may contain duplicates by having more than one piece of work assigned to them (again, Client One might have Client One - Video One Client One - Video Two etc.)
What's the best way of fetching the data and using ModRewrite to achieve a solution?
first you need to replace space to [_,-,+] then get the NAME of video by ID form database in PHP. try it
i know its not a best answer for you... it just for suggestion.

How to compare strings based on caracters similarity in SQL?

I'm working on redirecting people if they type a "not really wrong url".
For example I have a good URL http://www.website.com/category/foo-bar-if-bar-foo/.
This one works so if a user enter to my website with it, I can retrieve the article corresponding.
But if someone enter to my website with a not really wrong url like http://www.website.com/category/foo-bar-foo/ because an another website has referenced a wrong url, I should redirect him to the right one instead of having a 404 status code...
So how should I do this? and Most important, should I do this ?
I actually use Eloquent with Laravel 4.2.
Thank you in advance.
EDIT
I was wrong about stackoverflow, thanks for your comment. It uses the unique ID of a post.
EDIT 2
I Looked at SOUNDEX function in SQL, it's really good if there is a small difference like a character or two missing. But if my url is as broken as my example, it's not working anymore obviously. But thanks it's gonna be usefull.
Just thinking off the top of my head, you could create a SQL table (with Full-Text indexing enabled) containing all your paths (it might already exist).
In the event that a 404 is triggered, hijack that and do a MATCH (Full Text Search) and return the path with the highest scoring MATCH (you can also consider using a score threshold to prevent nonsensical matches).

How can I create a user-generated page on my website?

For example, say if a user wanted to 'add a place' to my database, how could I create a page almost instantly with that place's name in the domain e.g www.mydomain.com/placename?
I understand it might be a complex solution so if it is too complex to explain can you please push me into the right direction of what I should be researching.
Create functionality to create "pretty urls" in php. Read more about that here: http://www.roscripts.com/Pretty_URLs_-_a_guide_to_URL_rewriting-168.html
Create parsing functionality for the urls, so that it recognizes "/placename" as the page "placename"
Create a database structure for pages with the page id, title, content and the url slug, etc.
Create functionality to fetch the right page from the database according to the matching url slug.
Create functionality to render the retrieved informaton
If I understood you right that's one approach to what you want to do.
I'm assuming you're using Apache. If so, create a rule using mod_rewrite that forwards requests for /place/placename to /place.php?name=placename. Then write the place.php script, which will pull the user page from the database and display it in the appropriate fashion.
That's one way to do it - there are others.
First of all try to understand mod rewrite.
You could "mask: a GET url into a much nicer format.
Start here : http://www.elated.com/articles/mod-rewrite-tutorial-for-absolute-beginners/
Then google on and get yourself familiar with all the possibilities.
After that make sure the GET variable is unique in your database, to be absolutely sure use a unique ID.
Example :
domain.com/PLACEID/PLACENAME/
mod_rewrite could then translate this to your php script into :
domain.com/place.php?VAR=PLACEID&VAR2=PLACENAME
Search the data from the user/place through the PLACEID .
Good luck

Create redirect URL

Here is the real case, in the NewsNow.co.uk, there are many link of uptodate news from thousands of website. And the example for one of the news url:
http://newsnow.co.uk/A/471722742?-19721
all the news url are formated like that, but when we click it, we will be brought to the real url, for ex:
http://www.abcactionnewsx.com/dpp/news/state/bla-bla
anyone know how to achieve this efficiently ?
Store a table of 'internal' paths (the 'newsnow' urls) and the 'destination' urls in a database of some sort; sqlite3 would be a fine choice for smaller applcations.
You could hash the 'internal' paths if lookup time for specific strings was too slow in the database you chose.
When a request comes in, look it up in the database and send back a 302 response with the 'target' URL as the new location for the resource.
This is done using a rewrite engine that is built into common webservers like Apache or Nginx. These engines allow you to write rules that transform a url like the first one into something that would be better understood by your php pages. For example, you could create rules that would turn your first link above into:
http://newsnow.co.uk/index.php?catagory=A&id=471722742&referrer=-19721
This is transparent to the user and they will only ever see the link they first typed in. You can then use the variables being passed in to perform whatever actions you desire. In this case you might want to use the variables to perform some kind of database lookup to retrieve the actual destination that you are interested in. Then it's just a question of performing a php redirect to the link in question.
Check out the following link for a very quick intro to Apache's rewriting capabilities (called mod_rewrite): http://www.besthostratings.com/articles/mod-rewrite-intro.html

PHP Parsing URL

Ok, i'm trying to get data from a database to be pulled according to the url.
I have a database that is holding data for some announcements for individual customer websites. The websites are in individual directories on my website. (i.e., www.domain.com/website1/index.html, www.domain.com/website2/index.html, www.domain.com/website3/index.html, etc..) In the database i have a column that has each customers "filing name" (aka directory name - website1, website2, website3, etc..). I want to try and display only rows in the database where filingName = website1 for the domain "www.domain.com/website1/index.html". Hope this makes sense. I'm basically trying to figure out how to connect the dots between a single page and only pulling a specific customers records. Any thoughts??
Thanks!
Depending on how big your data set is, it might be "cheaper" to preprocess the URLs and store the individual components you need to match on. e.g. create extra fields for host/dir/querystring and store those individually, instead of a monolithic absolute URL. This would be safer than trying to do substring matches, especially if the substring you're matching could be part of multiple different urls ('abc' being part of 'abc.com' and 'abctv.com').
Use a like statement in your query:
SELECT * FROM `sites` WHERE `url` LIKE "%/website1/%";
Your best bet is going to be to store these identifiers on their own in the database (ex 1= website1, 2 = website 2) and name the directories accordingly. Then in your .htaccess file, manipulate the URL to look like your $_GET variable is the directory name, replace it with the matching name in your database. Do this with RewriteRule rule. This is the most absolute way to achieve this while keeping the same URL structure.
edit: whoops, didn't realize how old this thread was.

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