Routing URLs in PHP - php

I'm working on a web page project. I decided to use Apache, PHP (5.1.7, version imposed by my service provider) and Dwoo (templating) for this purpose.
I want to route URLs to my templates. I'm aware there are many frameworks doing this kind of thing. I'm just wondering if there's a nice way to achieve it without.
I've set up my project as follows:
src/dwoo - Dwoo files
index.php - This should handle routing. Currently it just renders the front page of the site using a template.
templates - Templates that represent actual pages.
There is minimal amount of business logic (no real model). It's all just pretty static pages. Using templates makes maintenance work easier (inheritance ie.).
Any idea how to set up routing in this case? I guess ideally each given URL should route via index.php that then somehow decides which template to render (ie. /category/pagename would map to templates/category/pagename.tpl).

Use mod_rewrite to route everything to a single index.php file. Then check the variable in $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] within this file to dispatch to the required handler.
This configuration will enable mod_rewrite, if it's installed:
DirectorySlash Off
Options FollowSymLinks Indexes
DirectoryIndex index.php
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteRule ^.*$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f
RewriteRule ^.*$ - [L]
RewriteRule ^.*$ index.php [L]

Like trolskn (+1) describes:
Use mod_rewrite to route everything to a single index.php file. Then check the variable in $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] within this file to dispatch to the required handler.
But I found the following .htaccess (placed in the folder with the index.php which should "consume" everything after it) much more helpful:
Options -MultiViews
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^ index.php [QSA,L]
Also I would like to note that you might encounter the message
.htaccess: Invalid command 'RewriteEngine', perhaps misspelled
or defined by a module not included in the server configuration
This can easily be solved with sudo a2enmod rewrite && sudo service apache2 restart (source)

You might want to use PEAR's Net_URL_Mapper.

Related

Laravel in subfolder on webhost

I have a webapp written in Laravel that needs to run in a folder on a web host.
The app will have to be accessible via hostname.com/webhit/. This will point to the app's home page.
I only have one route:
Route::controller('/', 'HomeController');
HomeController's getIndex needs to serve the home page. This works.
However, as soon as I want to go to something like hostname.com/webhit/login, I get a 404 from Apache.
Obviously, .htaccess is not working properly. I need it to, essentially, turn URLs that look like hostname.com/webhit/login into hostname.com/webhit/index.php/login.
I have a .htaccess file in www/webhit (where index.php is located) that looks like this:
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
<IfModule mod_negotiation.c>
Options -MultiViews
</IfModule>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ webhit/index.php/$1 [L]
</IfModule>
I am not very familiar with .htaccess file syntax, but I believe it's doing something wrong.
Edit:
I did it. My .htaccess was wrong (it actually causes a redirect loop), but the issue was that it wasn't even being parsed by Apache (hence the 404 instead of a 500 due to >10 redirects in a request). I did the following steps in order to get everything to work:
Enable mod_rewrite and restart Apache (plenty of docs out there on how to do this)
But wait, there's more! By default, Apache on Ubuntu prevents URL rewrites. See this site. Most importantly, the following fragment from the URL above is very important: "By default, Ubuntu's Apache will ignore the directives in your .htaccess files." You will need to actually enable rewrites by editing \etc\apache2\sites-available\default and setting AllowOverride to all (see link above for more details).
Reload the configuration (or just restart apache).
Make sure you're using the correct .htaccess. My original version actually has a redirect loop in it. See the selected response for the correct version.
After this, I got it to work. I hope it helps future programmers having a similar issue!
Check default server requirements - laravel .htaccess file works for most situations. Try with this:
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
Options -MultiViews
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^ index.php [L]
</IfModule>
I would suggest you to use resourceful controllers - mappings from your route to your controllers methods are much more clear, and you'll get full
resource with one command (routes,models,views,controllers)

How to write simple routes in PHP

I'm working on a project using Cloud9 IDE, running PHP5 on Apache 2.0. I'm primarily a front-end developer, but I have decent experience with PHP. I'm familiar with MVC frameworks, and to a lesser degree, this functionality is what I'm trying to emulate, but simpler. I tried implementing CakePHP, but found it was a little too robust for what I needed -- I don't want a backend-heavy setup. I want to write some custom sort of routing mechanism for my application.
Ideally, I would like every request to my site to come through one page (this custom "Controller"), and from there I can write my own logic to figure out the appropriate templates, http codes, errors, etc., to include. My question is, how do I make this happen? In other words, how do I make a request to http://mysite.c9.io/user/view/2 get channeled through http://mysite.c9.io/index.php , and not try to request the /user/view/2 directory on my server?
I'm vaguely familiar with mod_rewrite and .htaccess rules, but I suspect they may play a role here.
First make sure that mod_rewrite is enabled. Check your httpd.conf file for
LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so
Make sure it's not disabled with a # in front of it. Next change the root <Directory> settings to
<Directory />
Options All
AllowOverride All
</Directory>
Make sure you change all the occurrences of AllowOverride None to All. Then restart Apache.
Now that mod_rewrite is enabled, add this to an .htaccess file in your web root / directory
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/index\.php$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d # not a dir
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f # not a file
RewriteRule ^ index.php [L]
This makes sure that every request that otherwise would have been a 404 (which means it excludes images, css, js etc.) now routes through the front controller index.php. Some, content management systems like to add another %{REQUEST_URI} check to make sure index.php is only invoked to process the kind of requests the framework actually expects.
Joomla, for example, adds the following:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} /component/|(/[^.]*|\.(php|html?|feed|pdf|vcf))$ [NC]

htaccess rewrite ".../pages/about.php" to ".../about"

I've searched and found a lot of questions on this site and elsewhere that are very similar, but I've tried implementing and modifying all the suggestions I've found and none of it works. I realize this is a very basic question an I am extremely frustrated because nothing I'm trying is working.
With that having been said... I am trying to organize my content pages within kurtiskronk.com/pages/... (e.g. kurtiskronk.com/pages/about.php)
What I want to do is make it so that I can simply link to kurtiskronk.com/about ... So how do I go about stripping "pages/" and ".php"? I don't have a ton of content pages, so it's not a big deal if I have to specify for each page, though something dynamic would be handy.
NOTES: I am using Rackspace Cloud hosting, and WordPress is installed in /blog. My phpinfo() can be seen at http://kurtiskronk.com/pages/phpinfo.php
This is my existing .htaccess file (in the root)
php_value register_globals "on"
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
#301 redirect to domain without 'www.'
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.kurtiskronk\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://kurtiskronk.com/$1 [R=301,NC]
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{ENV:PHP_DOCUMENT_ROOT}/pages/$1 -f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ pages/$1 [L]
RewriteCond %{ENV:PHP_DOCUMENT_ROOT}/pages/$1.php -f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ pages/$1.php [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^blog/ blog/index.php [L]
# PHP - MAIL
php_value mail.force_extra_parameters -kurtis#kurtiskronk.com
I tested and the rewrite works with the line below (/about as URL brings up file /pages/about.php), but then the homepage gives a 500 Internal Server Error:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /pages/$1.php [L]
So I'm still sort of in the same boat as before, and as a follow-up, possibly more difficult question, if you go to http://kurtiskronk.com/weddings I am using SlideShowPro (flash) w/ SSP Director (self-hosted) as the back-end for it. When it pulls up a new image, it adds the following after /weddings ... "#id=album-152&num=content-9698"
There are four sections of the portfolio
# Homepage (kurtiskronk.com) id=album-148 ($id is constant for this section)
# Weddings (/weddings) id=album-152 ($id is constant for this section)
# Portraits (/portraits) id=album-151 ($id is constant for this section)
# Commercial (/commercial) id=album-150 ($id is constant for this section)
Assuming we get kurtiskronk.com/weddings to rewrite successfully without breaking anything, how would we make the total URL something cleaner kurtiskronk.com/weddings/9698 since the $num is the only thing that will change within a given section?
Kurtis, thanks for the extra information. It's a lot easier to give a specific answer to this.
My first comment is that you need to separate out in your thinking URI space -- that is what URIs you want your users to type into their browser -- and filesystem space -- what physical files you want to map to. Some of your mappings are URI->URI and some are URI->FS
For example you want to issue a permanent redirect of www.kurtiskronk.com/* to kurtiskronk.com/*. Assuming that you only server the base and www subdomains from this tree, then this cond/rule pair should come first, so that you can assume that all other rules only refer to kurtiskronk.com.
Next, you need to review the RewiteBase documentation. .htaccess files are processed in what Apache calls a Per-Directory context and this directive tells the rewrite engine what to assume as the URI base which got to this directory and .htaccess file. From what I gather, your blog is installed in docroot/blog (in the filesystem, and that you want to get to directory by typing in http://kurtiskronk.com/blog/ but that this .htaccess file is for the root folder -- that is the base should be (this goes before the www mapping rule)
DirectorySlash On
DirectoryIndex index.php
RewriteBase /
#301 redirect to domain without 'www.'
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.kurtiskronk\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://kurtiskronk.com/$1 [R=301,NC]
You can add some field dumps look for REDIRECT_* in the Server or Environment table in the phpinfo O/P to see if these are sensible. For example:
RewriteWrite ^(.*)$ - \
[E=TESTDR:%{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/pages/$1.php,E=TESTPDR:%{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/pages/$1.php]
Your next rule is that if the file exists in the subdirectory pages then use it:
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/pages/$1 -f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ pages/$1 [NS,L]
[Note that some shared service sites don't set up DOCUMENT_ROOT properly for the rewrite engine so you may need to run a variableinfo script (<?php phpinfo(INFO_ENVIRONMENT | INFO_VARIABLES); to see if it sets up alternatives. On your site you have to use %{ENV:PHP_DOCUMENT_ROOT} instead.]
Your next rule is that if the file exists, but with the extension .php in the subdirectory pages then use it:
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/pages/$1.php -f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ pages/$1.php [NS,L]
Now redirect any blog references to the blog subdirectory unless the URI maps to a real file (e.g. the blog stylesheets and your uploads.)
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^blog/ blog/index.php [L]
A complication here is that WP may be using a poorly documented Apache feature call Path Info that is a script can act as a pseudo directory so http://kurtiskronk.com/blog/tag/downtown/ is redirected to docroot/blog/index.php/tag/downtown/ which is then executed by `docroot/blog/index.php using /tag/downtown/ as the PATH_INFO. But this is one for Wordpress experts to comment on. If this last rule doesn't work then try:
RewriteRule ^blog/(.*) blog/index.php/$1 [L]
PS. I like your site. I wish I was that young again :(
Postscript
When you say "it doesn't work", what doesn't with this .htaccess?
http://kurtiskronk.com/phpinfo,
http://kurtiskronk.com/phpinfo.php,
http://kurtiskronk.comblog/tag/downtown/
It's just that these rules work for these tests (with domain swapped) on mine. (One way is to move or copy the above variableinfo.php to the various subdirectories. If necessary temporarily rename the index.php to index.php.keep, say, and copy the variableinfo.php to the index.php file. You can now enter the various URI test patterns and see what is happening. Look for the REDIRECT_* fields in the phpinfo output, and the SCRIPT_NAME will tell you which is being executed. You can add more {E=...] flags to examine the various pattern results. (Remember that these only get assigned if the rule is a match.
Lastly note the changes above especially the additional NS flags. For some reason mod_rewrite was going directly into a subquery which was resulting in redirect: being dumped into the file pattern. I've had a look at the Apache code and this is a internal botch to flag that further redirection needs to take place (which then replaces this or backs out). However this open bug indicates that this backout can be missed in sub-queries and maybe that's what is happening here. Certainly adding the NS flas cured the problem on my test environment.
PS. Note the added explicit DirectoryIndex directive and also that whilst http://kurtiskronk.com will run the root index.php, the explicit /index.php version will run the one in pages, because that's what your rules say.
Here is a simple solution. You can use it apache conf file(s) or in .htaccess (easier to set up when you're trying).
mod_rewrite has to be enabled.
For example, use .htaccess in your DocumentRoot with:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /pages/$1.php [L]
It will redirect /about to /pages/about.php, and any other page.
The "RewriteCond" part is to authorize access to an existing file (eg: if you had an "about" file at the root of your site, then it will be served, instead of redirecting to /pages/about.php).
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule /([0-9]+)$ /pages/$1.php [L]
Put something like this in your .htaccess file. I guess that is what you want.
Juest a redirect from a simple url to a longer url.

.htaccess: how do multiple .htaccess files work?

This is in context of CakePHP, but I'm sure it is common in other applications. I implemented the instructions on this page:
http://book.cakephp.org/view/917/Apache-and-mod_rewrite-and-htaccess
A:
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^$ app/webroot/ [L]
RewriteRule (.*) app/webroot/$1 [L]
</IfModule>
B:
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^$ webroot/ [L]
RewriteRule (.*) webroot/$1 [L]
</IfModule>
C:
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?url=$1 [QSA,L]
</IfModule>
In section 3, there are 3 .htaccess files. Let's just call them A, B, and C in order for simplicity. Although it seems to be working on my server (localhost XAMPP), I'm not sure if I understand the path of the redirects. Whatever address I type in, it always go to localhost\cake\users\login as it's supposed to.
Root directory of my application in terms of where it resides is \cake. I have \cake, \cake\app, and cake\app\webroot with A, B, and C, respectively, in them. After following the above instruction, the codes in cake\app run, which is what I want. Prior to setting up the .htaccess files correctly like above, codes in \cake were being run; this was incorrect as it was telling me my database wasn't setup, you don't have this file, etc.
Can someone chime in and help me out with the "path" this application is taking before running any php files? Is it redirecting everything to cake\app\webroot, then to whatever redirect is setup beyond the .htaccess files from there? (in this case, to cake\users\login)
Thank you for your help!
PS: I'm ashamed to say I still haven't figured out which part of which file is redirecting to all of the HTTP request to the user login page. I set this up a while ago, and I just came back to it. I think I was following the second tutorial on the CakePHP Cookbook page where you add an ACL feature..
Can someone chime in and help me out with the "path" this application is taking before running any php files? Is it redirecting everything to cake\app\webroot, then to whatever redirect is setup beyond the .htaccess files from there? (in this case, to cake\users\login)
In short, yes. There is only one .htaccess file doing the real work, and that is "C" (which is the file in /app/webroot/.htaccess). This passes any requests that aren't for an existing file or directory to index.php which bootstraps CakePHP and handles the request. Any further "redirection" is handled by CakePHP's routing.
Edit:
To address your question about what's redirecting to the login page, chances are you have configured the Auth component and haven't set any "public" pages via $this->Auth->allow().
The other two are there in case you put the CakePHP installation directory or the app directory into a folder that is used by Apache to serve pages, e.g. /var/www/html or similar. You'll note that the structure is:
/cakephp-1.3.x/.htaccess ("A")
/cakephp-1.3.x/app/.htaccess ("B")
/cakephp-1.3.x/app/webroot/.htaccess ("C")
So, any request at any of these levels will end up being handled by the RewriteRule in "C". This is done to protect sensitive data such as your database connection information and ensure the application functions properly (as all requests should go through the CakePHP bootstrapper, unless you've set up custom routing).
The following line redirects everything to your index page, which is a Cake construct.
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?url=$1 [QSA,L]
In your case, I don't think that your redirections are directly caused by your .htaccess files. Your webroot htaccess simply pipes everything to your index page.
You should consider checking your index page, however. The controller for that page probably has a default clause for incoming arguments. Thus, if you enter a url with an unknown parameter, your index page will simply show a login screen.
That's my two cents. However, I've only worked with CakePHP as an experiment, so someone with more experience should feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
I think it's occurring due to use of Auth component in your application.You wrote that you were trying on Acl component part of cakephp, which is where Auth component is used.In case of inclusion of Auth component in requested controller, cakephp redirects to /users/login by default if no other loin method is specified. So i guess htaccess is not causing problem here.

URL on apache server does not default to the .php file after / has been added

Generally a url that looks like this:
http://www.domain.com/product.php/12/
will open up product.php and serve the /12/ as request parameters, which then my PHP script can process to pull out the right product info. However when I migrated this whole site, after developing it, to a new server, I get a 404 error, because on that server it's not defaulting to the mother directory/file in case of an absence of requested directories.
I vaguely remember learning that this is generally a common apache function but I can't seem to recall how to set it up or how to manipulate it.. if there's an .htaccess method to achieve this that would be great.
What you're referring to is mod_rewrite. The official docs for it are here: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_rewrite.html
You would configure it either in your VHost definition (recommended) or in an .htaccess file.
Assuming that you want to map all requests to a resource that Apache cannot serve (such as files that don't exist) to products.php you can use the following:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -s [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -l [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteRule ^.*$ - [NC,L]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /products.php?request=$1 [NC,L]
You can then use $_GET['request'] to get the path requested and take it from there, depending on what you want to do. I'd normally recommend letting mod_rewrite handle parsing the request and passing the proper attributes to your PHP, but if you're not familiar with mod_rewrite it's probably easier to do it in your PHP.
you can use mod rewrite engine to map this to
http://www.domain.com/product.php?arg=12
Mod rewrite details: http://forum.modrewrite.com
Sample:
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^files/([^/]+)/(.+) files.php?app=$1&file=$2 [NC]
this rewrite rule will map any request containing files/firstrPart/secondpart to the script files.php
everything between the first and second slash after files will be passed as parameter app and the rest as file
Basicly you define a regex with some subpaterns and state which script should really be called.
You cna refer to the subpatterns with $n where n is the 1 based index of the pattern.
Have fun.
NOTE this is a extreme simplification of mod rewrite. Please do some research before you use it because this might go terribly wrong...
The directive you're looking for is "AcceptPathInfo on". mod_negotiations MultiViews feature would also give you the option of not including the ".php" which is another common one people abuse mod_rewrite to do.

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