User-friendly URL using HTACCESS

Question

I have the following link: dominio.com/?p=filmes_v&m=tt081692 Man .htaccess

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
  RewriteEngine On

  RewriteRule ^film/?$ index.php?p=filmes [NC,L]
  RewriteRule ^film/([a-z0-9-]+)/?$ index.php?p=filmes_v&?m=$2 [NC]
</IfModule>

My goal is: dominio.com/film/tt081692

But I can’t put the variable $m of the link on .htaccess

I have another problem:

dominio.com/film  -> O site fica certo

dominio.com/film/ -> O CSS não é carregado

Answer 1

Resolution

Remove the ? before the m and use variable $1:

RewriteRule ^film/([a-z0-9\-]+)/?$ index.php?p=filmes_v&m=$1 [NC]

The htaccess will be as follows:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
  RewriteEngine On

  RewriteRule ^film/?$ index.php?p=filmes [NC,L]
  RewriteRule ^film/([a-z0-9\-]+)/?$ index.php?p=filmes_v&m=$1 [NC]
</IfModule>

_{Note that within [] in regular expressions it is recommended to escape -, because they are used in the syntax of the expression, as an example [a-z] indicating of a until z. - @Guilhermenascimento}

Links and Scripts

Using URL friendly you accurate can use absolute paths or just reference the files indicating a / at the beginning of the way:

<link href="http://meudominio.com/css/meucss.css">
<!-- ou -->
<link href="/css/meucss.css">

<a href="http://meudominio.com/contato">
<!-- ou -->
<a href="/contato">

<script src="http://meudominio.com/js/jquery.min.js"></script>
<!-- ou -->
<script src="/js/jquery.min.js"></script>

Relative Paths

Heed: Relative paths has to be initiated with / which indicates the site root, because if the current page has an address similar to http://meudominio.com/contato and the user click on a link <a href="sobre">Sobre</a> he will end up at the address http://meudominio.com/contato/sobre.

A very interesting resource to use with relative paths is the RewriteBase. For example imagine that you have a blog and it’s structured more or less like this on the server:

/root
| - /www
|   | - /blog
|       | - /css
|       | - /js

And the URL to access this blog is http://meusite.com/blog/ then in all your code you will have to reference your scripts and links using the semi-relative URL /blog/.

<link href="/blog/css/estilos.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">
<script src="/blog/js/scripts.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<a href="/blog/sobre">Sobre</a>

But if in the htaccess of Blog is defined the RewriteBase for blog, will no longer need the /blog/ in the URL:

RewriteBase /blog/

And your Urls can stay:

<link href="/css/estilos.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">
<script src="/js/scripts.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<a href="/sobre">Sobre</a>

And so if at some point you decide to change the address http://meusite.com/blog/ for http://blog.meusite.com just need to change the RewriteBase for / or remove it:

RewriteBase /

So you don’t need to change all the links removing the one /blog of Urls. :)

_{You can also have this feature through tag base. But I prefer the htaccess.}

Other means

A very interesting way to make friendly Urls is the way I call it Dynamic Friendly Urls, the implementation would be so:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
  RewriteEngine On

  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f

  RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?uri=$1
</IfModule>

This way you can treat the URI in PHP to receive as many variables as you want, example:

$tmp = !empty($_GET['uri']) ? $_GET['uri'] : 'home'; // Página padrão home

$uri = explode('/', $tmp);

$vars = Array();

if (count($uri) > 1){
    $key = 'page';
    foreach ($uri as $val) {
        if (is_null($key))
            $key = $val;
        else {
            $vars[$key] = $val;
            $key = NULL;
        }
    }
}

In the previous example, you can send the URL http://meudominio/catalogo/categoria/eletrodomestico/preco/100~500/voltagem/220 and you would have the following structure in the variable $vars:

page        => catalogo
categoria   => eletrodomestico
preco       => 100~500
voltagem    => 220

So the first argument is always the page and the following are any parameter you want, in any order and should always be sent in pairs chave/valor. This form is quite useful for making filters.

Model MVC

Using this concept it is simple to apply a MVC model that would be:

controller/action/demais/parametros

For example:

$tmp = !empty($_GET['uri']) ? $_GET['uri'] : 'home'; // Página padrão home

$uri = explode('/', $tmp);

$vars = Array(
    // Controller `index` caso não tenha parâmetros na URI, caso tenha armaza e remove-o da URI
    'controller'   => (count($uri) > 0 ? array_shift($uri) : 'index'),
    // Action `index` caso não tenha parâemtros na URI
    'action'       => (count($uri) > 0 ? array_shift($uri) : 'index'),
    // Demais parâmetros
    'params'       => Array()
);

$key = NULL;
if (count($uri) > 1){
    foreach ($uri as $val) {
        if (is_null($key))
            $key = $val;
        else {
            $vars['params'][$key] = $val;
            $key = NULL;
        }
    }
}

Thus accessing the URL:

www.meudominio.com/sobre/empresa/page/3

We will have the following result:

$vars = Array(
    'controller' => 'sobre',
    'action'     => 'empresa',
    'params'     => Array(
        'page' => '3'
    )
);

Another Example for MVC