How do I make pages in individual directories?

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09-19-2011, 06:25 PM
multimediocrity

How do I make pages in individual directories?

I have been curious for a long time about how to make web pages with a page in each directory.

Example:
mysite.com
mysite.com/tools
mysite.com/about

Usually, I just create one php page and leave it as index.php and use variables to call all other pages.

Example:
mysite.com/?p=tools
mysite.com/?p=about

This works fine, but I'd rather not develop sites this way. I can easily add my page code to each page in the directory, but I want to use one central document for governing all my PHP. What is the most professional way to handle this? I can think of many solutions, but what is the paradigm?

Thanks,
multi
09-19-2011, 06:45 PM
Jeff Mott

You can use a rewrite rule.

Code:

# .htaccess RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ index.php?p=$1 [QSA,L]

This translates a URL like /tools into index.php?p=tools.

You can simplify this a little by removing the query string component, and instead check the REQUEST_URI in your code.

Code:

# .htaccess RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php [QSA,L]

PHP Code:

// index.php $uri = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']; if ($uri == '/tools') { tools_page(); } elseif ($uri == '/about') { about_page(); } else { header('Status: 404 Not Found'); echo '<html><body><h1>Page Not Found</h1></body></html>'; }

EDIT: Fixed mistake in conditions.
09-21-2011, 04:57 PM
multimediocrity

Hmm... is this the going paradigm? I think there's a more conventional and simple way to do this, but I'm not sure what it is.
09-21-2011, 05:28 PM
Jeff Mott

That's the going paradigm. The major frameworks do it this way. For example, Zend, Symfony, CakePHP, CodeIgniter, and others -- they each have you define a mapping between an external URL and an internal action to perform.