PHP url rewrite example

For some reason... this is really confusing and we can't find any information about it.

We've tried to pay experts - but we can't seem to find any - anywhere.

Staged site: https://peprojects.dev/examples/php-url-rewrite-example

Know about it? We'll give you $$$ to explain it to us (clearly) ;)

• ?
• ?page=about
• ?page=contact
• ?page=projects
• ?page=project&slug=project-name

At first we thought ^ would be used - and then we would turn it into the following.

• /home
• /about
• /contact
• /projects
• • projects/project-name (case-study of each)

But as far as we can learn, it's the opposite. You start with the clean URLs and then rewrite them behind the scenes

.htaccess style of rewriting the URL

# comment

# turn rewriting on
RewriteEngine On


# /projects  →  ?page=projects
# getting tangled up with the next one?

# /page-name →                 				?page=page-name
RewriteRule ^([0-9a-zA-Z_-]+)$ 				?page=$1 [NC,L]

# /projects/project-name  →             	?page=projects&slug=project-slug
RewriteRule ^projects/([0-9a-zA-Z_-]+)$ 	?page=project&slug=$1 [NC,L]

# /exercises/exercise-name  →            	?page=exercise&slug=exercise-slug
RewriteRule ^exercises/([0-9a-zA-Z_-]+)$ 	?page=exercise&slug=$1 [NC,L]

# /layouts/layout-name →              		?page=module&slug=module-slug
RewriteRule ^layouts/([0-9a-zA-Z_-]+) 		?page=module&slug=$1 [NC,L]

but the funny thing here... is there's actually a /projects folder - so that trips things up -- it tries to get that before the rewrite/redirect -

So, the best idea for that so far was to make a different folder or just prepend with a _ or something.

Now that ^ worked. But the next part of the puzzle... is that the path / (the local path vs the path up on the server -- aren't the same etc) -- so, we'll need a way to either set that root with base - - or have some function that sets the path and use that for all the paths and allows them to behave like relative paths / so that the site can be moved to any server and still work.

How do you know when it works?

• All of the links work

• All assets like CSS are propertly linked to and loaded on sub pages etc

• It works locally and can be setup in any folder on a server

What were the important concepts

• We need Apache and .htaccess to do the rewrites

• The server needs to support that (hosting company)

• The paths need to be changed back to /path-name and rewritten to query-string-style

• We need to know the syntax to write the rewrites

• Rewrites need to manually be put in place (unless you have other ideas)

• We need to set the path based on the environment (note host and subfolder / relative paths etc.)

• We can create a configuration file like a dot-env type thing to store the full path for the given environment in a variable

• We can use that variable to set the base path

• The config file can be ignored and left up to the person setting up the project on a different host (like wp-config for example) - and leave an example-config.php to lead them to create a config.php

• Anything else?

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