Search Engine friendly URL in HTML With PHP

[Jagan]

Hi Everyone

I need some help about how to enhance PHP to generate HTML page.

I have one example, which is done by someone else, this is like he did as below:-

Actual URL generated by PHP is as below:-

http://www.w5d.de/index.php?c=2

But by this developer, it is converted to in this html format

http://www.w5d.de/c,2.html

Can any one give me idea what to do, to make these html pages throuh PHP

Mohnesh Kohli
http://www.megrisoft.com http://www.indiabook.com
http://www.idofind.com http://www.submitshop.com
Submit Shop Search Engine Optimization

[piz]

This has nothing to do with PHP.
That's a module for apache.

--> mod_rewrite
You can define RewriteRules to 'rewrite' and redirect to another page/request string without redirecting by header.

--> http://httpd.apache.org/docs-2.1/en/...d_rewrite.html
--> http://www.sitepoint.com/article/910/1
--> http://razertech.com/edge/web/modrewrite-1.htm

[Nightfire]

I wouldn't have your 'signature' as that long again either, your sig is almost as big as your post, if not bigger

[Jagan]

I have two question

a) Can i do the this all through .httaccess file, if yes then what to write in the file

b) Because i have no server access, so i can not make any changes in apache, can you let me know what i have to write my server people to make the things working.

Jagan

[piz]

a) yes - see links below

Edit: ehh... above i mean...

b) following: "Hi guys, is it possible to use mod_rewrite by htaccess files? If not, is it possible to switch it on? Thx very much. Regards, Jagan".

[Nightfire]

http://www.sitepoint.com/article/910

[firepages]

mod_rewrite is only 1 way to skin the cat and very complex for the regex challenged

Apache has a 'lookback' feature which means that when you type in say

www. domain.com/blah/fnar

apache will ( with force-type directive set in .htaccess ) look for fnar.html or fnar.php [depending on the force-type statement] , in the /blah/ directory if it exists..

if the /blah/ directory does not exist apache will look for blah.php etc and if that exists add 'fnar' to the $_SERVER['PATH_INFO'] array .

which brings us to $_SERVER['PATH_INFO'] ..
with the url www .domain.com/index/blah/fnar/grug (or indeed www .domain.com/index.php/blah/fnar/grug )

if say index.php exists then then blah,fnar and grug will all be available via $_SERVER['PATH_INFO'].

The only downside to using PATH_INFO is that those url's mess up any relative links you may have on the page , so you need to use absolute links or add a prefix to your relative links depending on the depth of the PATH_INFO.

Using PATH_INFO also requires that you know the exact order of the incoming variables as variable names are not passed only thier values.

Thats why you often see other characters passed which are used as a delimiter e.g. with www. domain.com/index.htm/3,5,blue,fnah may well be 4 comma delimited variables , its easier to pass (and parse!)

domain.com/index.htm/3,,,fnah
than
domain.com/index.htm/3//fnah

again though your script needs to know the exact order of incoming data, but this is preferable (IMO) to multiple mod_rewrite rules.

Another common method employed is by using Apache's error handling , you can make your 404 error page a php (or other) script , which will read the url than caused the 404 , parse it and set a header to the actual page preserving the original url.

I personally prefer one of the the PATH_INFO methods as it works on almost all PHP installations (on IIS you just have to live with the /index.php/fnar/grout