page url problem

[pradeepjain]

hii guys !!

I have a website where in i was listing all the mobiles in a page like

1.nokia 3310
2.motorola p150
3. ..

so each mobile has description page . so i was passing the model(3310) and brand(nokia) in url to a page (mobile_desc,ph p) where i was getting the $_GET variables and querying it .

1. now client wants some changes like the model and brand should not go through url, so how do i need to pass the model and brand to next page so that i can use it .

2. and he wants pages like http://xyz.com/nokia3310 and stuff instead of http://xyz.com/mobile_desc.php so that google can recognize it .

[TheServant]

1. $_POST variable? $_SESSION variable? $_POST for forms, but I would look into $_SESSION and maybe some AJAX to store it in the session when a user clicks something.
2. The most common way is using .htaccess mod_rewrite, but you will need to think of how your real URL relates to what you want it to look like.

[pradeepjain]

say i take them in a form and list them .but whn i click on nokia 3110 how will $_POST in next page know that the nokia 3110 was clicked? i had this doubt only!

[TheServant]

You can submit a form using Javascript and onChange or onClick.

[pradeepjain]

i think you got ma point wrong!


i am like displaying a list of all mobiles in a page . like 10-20 mobiles with pictures of the mobile . when the user clicks on the picture of the mobile it takes him to description of the mobile . i was making the url of the image to next page like this in a while loop of a mysql query

$myresult .= "<a href='camera_rating.php?p1=". $row['property1'] . "&p2=".$row['property2'] . "'><img src='/camera/camerapicdisplay.php?p1=". $row['property1'] . "&p2=".$row['property2'] . "'</img></a>";

where in i used to pass the needed data to next page .since GET is not best method to use . i wanted to pass it invisible to camera_rating.p hp .

[Dormilich]

I don’t see what should be wrong with GET, otherwise you have to make it a form to use POST.

it will be especially a problem with the image url, because that’s not meant to be POSTed.

[pradeepjain]

okie !! if i continue with GET ! what are the ways so that i can mask the variables and values from users!!

[pradeepjain]

2. The most common way is using .htaccess mod_rewrite, but you will need to think of how your real URL relates to what you want it to look like.

yeah as i said earlier instead of url like

http://xyz.com/camera_rating.php?p1=nokia&p2=3310

it should look like

http://xyz.com/nokia3310

[Dormilich]

this looks like a job for mod_rewrite (if you are on Apache)

[Markus]

In your models database, allow for a field 'model_alias', or something like that. This field should correspond to what you want to display in the URL. So for your Brand: Nokia, Model: 3310 row, insert the alias: nokia3310. This is done because, without some extra processing, you wouldn't know what nokia3310 points to in the database.

Then use a simple rewrite such as:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^/phone/(.*)$ /phone?alias=$1

You then have access to the alias via $_GET['alias']. You can then use this data to pull the relevant information from the database.

[pradeepjain]

okie i got the concept very well ! i will store the nokia3310 in ma table .

since the proj i am working has come a long way is it possible to ,maintain the url like

http://xyz.com/mobile_rating.php?p1=nokia&p2=3310

and rewrite it to http://xyz.com/nokia3310

and i am on apache itself . i donot know much about rewrite

can you please tell what this piece of code is doing ?

 RewriteRule ^/phone/(.*)$ /phone?alias=$1

[Dormilich]

converting /phone/xyz to /phone?alias=xyz

[Markus]

okie i got the concept very well ! i will store the nokia3310 in ma table .

since the proj i am working has come a long way is it possible to ,maintain the url like

http://xyz.com/mobile_rating.php?p1=nokia&p2=3310

and rewrite it to http://xyz.com/nokia3310

The difficulty with this is on what criteria do you process 'nokia3310'. Of course you could say split the letters from the numbers and then use that, which would be the equivalent of ^([a-zA-Z]+)([0-9]+) - or something like that. This however does not bode well for maintenance; what if you have a phone that has numbers in it's name, or a brand that has letters in it's model?

You could then say have a specific rule for each model & brand, the equivalent of RewriteRule ^/phone/nokia3310$ /mobile_rating.p hp?p1=nokia&p2= 3310 - of course there would be many more for each model & brand. But then when a new model or brand is created you would have to add this to the .htaccess file. The same goes for when you edit or delete a model or brand. I think you can see how this method is simply not viable.

There is another way using htaccess that you can perform a lookup using a RewriteMap, although I am not sure how quick (read: slow) this method is.

After considering the above options, I think you can see why I suggested using an alias as it drastically cuts down the work needed in maintenance and extensibility, etc. That said, however, you have to decide whether using an alias would require a rewrite of the existing code and whether that rewrite would be more expensive than one of the aforementioned methods.

- Mark.

P.S. There may be other methods that I have overlooked.

[Markus]

can you please tell what this piece of code is doing ?

 RewriteRule ^/phone/(.*)$ /phone?alias=$1

See the documentation on mod_rewrite, more specifically the RewriteRule directive.

[pradeepjain]

okie i make the url look like

http://xyz.com/mobile_rating.php?nokia3310

can it be rewritten to without mobile_rating.p hp and all ?

and rewrite it to http://xyz.com/nokia3310