Use SO's URL format for $_GET

StackOverflow has a very neat, clean URL format. It looks the same as a directory structure, but there can't be a directory for each question on here! My question is this:

How can I get http://www.site.com/sections/tutorials/tutorial1, for example, to stay like that in the address bar, but convert it to a $_GET request for PHP to mess around w开发者_JAVA百科ith?

I could use a .htaccess file, but I don't want the URL being rewritten - I'd like it to remain clean and friendly. Is my only option here to use PHP's string splitting functions to get some pretend $_GET data?

Thanks,

James

What about this, using .htaccess to split the URL up, the URL won't change but instead point to index.php with various $_GET variables, this could could be increased to cover more URL sections.

# turn rewriting on
RewriteEngine on

# get variables in this order, [object], [object,action], [object,action,selection]
RewriteRule ^([^/\.]+)/?$ /index.php?object=$1 [L,NC,QSA]
RewriteRule ^([^/\.]+)/([^/\.]+)/?$ /index.php?object=$1&action=$2 [L,NC,QSA]
RewriteRule ^([^/\.]+)/([^/\.]+)/([^/\.]+)/?$ /index.php?object=$1&action=$2&selection=$3 [L,NC,QSA]

A PHP Rest framework could do this for you, so I refer you to this question. Most of the frameworks won't load the data from $_GET, but will offer a similar and equally convenient way to read it.

It's actually a RESTful way of building your URI's. Not only SO applies this pattern. I recommend to not re-invent the wheel by taking a look at this question.

In addition you could switch over to a RESTful framework such as CakePHP or CodeIgniter, which are configured by default to use the RESTful pattern.

$_GET does not contain the path compontents from the URL, only the parameters that eventually follow the ?. You could use

$parts = explode('/', pathinfo($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], PATHINFO_DIRNAME));
var_dump($parts);

However it seems you should have a read on URL rewriting e.g. with mod_rewrite. "I don't want the URL being rewritten - I'd like it to remain clean and friendly" ... The rewriting happens on the server. The user never sees the "ugly" result.

If you don't want to use mod rewrite the best solution would be using regular expressions agains the $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] variable.

i.e:

preg_match('|/(.*)/(.*)|', $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], $match);
$_GET['param1'] = $match[1];
$_GET['param2'] = $match[2];

If you want to setup a capture all php script. IE if the script request doesn't exist use a default script, use mod-rewrite to redirect everything to one script i.e. the zend framework (and most of the PHP MVC framework) use this:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -s [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -l [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteRule ^.*$ - [NC,L]
RewriteRule ^.*$ index.php [NC,L]

I think that could be a bit cumbersome.