Mod rewrite ??

[spacepoet]

Hello:

I wanted to see if it is possible - or how it is possible - to use a .htaccess file to do mod re-writing for more search engine friendly URLs.

I have a zipcode database I am using, and wanted to see how I can dynamically re-write a URL like this:

www.MyWebsite.com/myCities.php?zip_id=35093

to a URL like this:

www.MyWebsite.com/Antonito-Colorado-81120

The data is in one table called "zipcodes" and the "zip_id" is used to pull out the city, state, and zipcode on the pages.

All I know how to do it this:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^$ Page.php

Where, it makes the URL go to Page.php ...

Can someone get me started on this? Not sure what direction I should be looking...

Thanks.

[Fou-Lu]

This hasn't a thing to do with PHP, moving to Apache configurations.
What are you trying to capture off of that rewrite url? The mappings to match between the zip_id and the number in the phrased URL.

[spacepoet]

Hi:

Yes, I think that is what I want .. not sure as it's new to me ..

I basically want to write keywords into the URL vs. having the query string.

It currently shows like this:

www.MyWebsite.com/myCities.php?zip_id=35093

So, I wanted to see if it is possible to use the "zip_id" to pull the city, state, and zipcode out of the database, and the re-write the URL to something like this:

www.MyWebsite.com/Antonito-Colorado-81120

Can this be done ??

[Fou-Lu]

Wait. Do you mean to go the other way so that it changes the querystring links into phrased url? Redirect would work, but I don't think that takes a pattern. And rewrite doesn't redirect the url. So that would require changing your links to match what you want.

[spacepoet]

Hi. yes - i want the querystring to become a phrased url.

i want to do it dynamically, since its 1000's of zipcodes coming from a database.

is this possible?


sorry if i don't understand mod rewriting - its new to me and i'm a bit confused what can be done with it.

thanks for the help.

[Fou-Lu]

Originally Posted by spacepoet

Hi. yes - i want the querystring to become a phrased url.

i want to do it dynamically, since its 1000's of zipcodes coming from a database.

is this possible?


sorry if i don't understand mod rewriting - its new to me and i'm a bit confused what can be done with it.

thanks for the help.

You'll use PHP after all. Reformat your URL's to match what you want.

[spacepoet]

Hi.

thanks for the reply ... but how?

can you show me some sample code?

thats where im stuck - i dont know how to do it or what type of code to look for.

thank you.

[Fou-Lu]

When you have a url that is in the format of /page.php?id=someid, you reformat this link to match how you want it to show. Assuming you have a mod_rewrite in place, it will redirect as needed.
I'd suggest writing a link manager for this to perform the replacement only if mod_rewrite is enabled. Otherwise its a search and replace.

[spacepoet]

Hi:

I am trying to do this 2 different ways, but no luck ..
- I am on a GoDaddy Linux/Apache server
- I have the site in a subfolder within the root, and that is where I am addding the .htaccess file, and the other files.

So ..

This is my .htaccess file

# Mod Rewrite
Options FollowSymLinks
Options -MultiViews
RewriteEngine on

RewriteRule ^([^/.]+)/?$ /Promotional.Products.State.Listing.php?abbr_state=$1&full_state=$2 [L]

RewriteRule   ^Promotional.Products.State.Listing.php?abbr_state=AL&full_state=Alabama$  Promotional-Products-Alabama-Promo-Items-Alabama.html

I am trying to get it to work 1 of 2 ways.

I changed the first link to be this:

<a href=\"Promotional.Products.State.Listing/Promotional-Products-Alabama-Promo-Items-Alabama.html\">Alabama</a>

I also have the other set of code in the .htaccess file to try and write:

<a href=\"Promotional.Products.State.Listing.php?abbr_state=AK&full_state=Alaska\">Alaska</a>

to

<a href=\"Promotional.Products.State.Listing/AK/Alaska">Alaska</a>

(Something like that) but it does not seems to be working.

Maybe GoDaddy servers take awhile to update (but that would seem odd).

What am I missing ??