URL rewriting in PHP without htaccess - php

Question

Website is running on a web host where we don't have access to a .htaccess file. However, I want to do URL rewriting for user friendly URLs.
e.g. Original URL
www.example.com/file?q=name
expected URL
www.example.com/file/name

Answer 1

As other people said, just use links like /index.php/nice/looking/url.
The "index.php" in the middle of the URL might look a little strange, but I don't think it's possible to have it look better without .htaccess
Else, you could ask your hoster to redirect any URL to /index.php so that you can handle URL rewriting without having /index.php in your URL.
Then you can just use a regex match to detect what file to include.
preg_match('#[/]{1}([a-zA-Z0-9]+)#', $_SERVER["PATH_INFO"], $matches) ($matches will contain all "parts" of the url in an array)
Be careful with including the files, use a whitelist so you're sure nobody would be able to load internal files.

Answer 2

as Alix Axel suggested you can use
www.example.com/index.php/file/name
then you will use $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] to process the URL.

Answer 3

Your best bet will be to have URLs such as this:
www.example.com/index.php/file/name
You'll to rewrite your PHP code though.

Answer 4

If you have an Apache server and AcceptPathInfo is enabled, then you can use the URL you wrote. A request of /file/name will then be automatically rewritten to /file with the PATH_INFO value of /name if /file is a regular file.

Answer 5

This is possible solely using language/content negotiation in the Apache configuration (httpd.conf or apache2.conf) along with rewrite rules. Use of an .htaccess file is not required.
In apache2.conf file (or httpd.conf) add the Multiviews directive, MultiviewsMatch directive, and rewrite rules:
<Directory /var/www/html>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Multiviews
AllowOverride None
Require all granted
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} /([^.]+)\.php [NC]
RewriteRule ^ /%1 [NC,L,R]
<Files "*.php">
MultiviewsMatch Any
</Files>
</Directory>
Then save the file and restart Apache sudo systemctl restart apache2
If you specify the Options directive later in httpd.conf, you have to repeat the Multiviews directive for each site:
<Directory /var/www/html/chocolate.com/>
Options FollowSymLinks Multiviews
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
</Directory>
<Directory /var/www/html/vanilla.com/>
Options FollowSymLinks Multiviews
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
</Directory>
This will not adversely affect content negotiation if you are already serving in multiple languages. For example, replacing example.com/home.php with
home.en.php
home.fr.php
home.de.php
Then in apache2.conf:
AddLanguage fr .fr
AddLanguage de .de
AddLanguage en .en
LanguagePriority fr de en
ForceLanguagePriority Fallback
Your language will still be negotiated but the php extension will not appear in the URL.

Answer 6

or can create a routing switch in the index.php file:
$request = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
switch ($request) {
case '/file' :
require __DIR__ . '/file';
break;
case '' :
require __DIR__ . '/file';
break;
case '/file/name' :
require __DIR__ . '/file?q=name';
break;
default:
http_response_code(404);
require __DIR__ . '/404.php';
break;
}

Answer 7

Try this
www.example.com/file?q=name
to
www.example.com/name (better than www.example.com/file/name)
Open your .htaccess from your project root folder and add this code
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule \.(js|css|jpe?g|png|gif)$ - [L]
RewriteRule "^([ \w-]+)/?$" /file?q=$1 [L,QSA]
This solves your problem. See the post how to rewrite URL in .htaccess