How do I make pages in individual directories?

**multimediocrity** · 09-19-2011 06:25 PM

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

**Jeff Mott** · 09-19-2011 06:45 PM

You can use a rewrite rule.

Code:

# .htaccess

RewriteCond &#37;{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.

**multimediocrity** · 09-21-2011 04:57 PM

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.

**Jeff Mott** · 09-21-2011 05:28 PM

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.

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