Seo-friendly url in CodeIgniter

Question

I've created a filter method for filtering the products list. This is my URL:

localhost/myshop/products/filter?category=shirts&color=blue&page=1

But I want to show this way:

localhost/myshop/products/shirts/blue/1

How can I achieve it?

Answer 1

Assuming that Products::filter() is responsible for handling the request, you can rewrite the method to accept parameters in its signature. So, if the current logic is something like this:

class Products extends CI_Controller
{
    public function filter()
    {
        // Retrieve data from GET params
        $page     = $this->input->get('page');
        $color    = $this->input->get('color');
        $category = $this->input->get('category');
    
        // Do the filtering with $category, $color and $page...
    }
}

You can simply refactor it to accept parameters through URL segments:

public function filter($category, $color, $page)
{        
    // Do the filtering with $category, $color and $page...
}

With this in place, your current URL is:

localhost/myshop/products/filter/shirts/blue/1

We need to get rid of that extra filter/ and we're done, right? Quoting from the docs :

Typically there is a one-to-one relationship between a URL string and its corresponding controller class/method. The segments in a URI normally follow this pattern:

example.com/class/method/param1/param2

In some instances, however, you may want to remap this relationship so that a different class/method can be called instead of the one corresponding to the URL.

OK, so we need to remap the current route. You have a few options:

• First, is to update your application/config/routes.php file with a new entry:

   $route['products/(:any)'] = 'products/filter/$1';

  It says that if a URL starts with products/ , remap it to the filter method of products class.

  Here you can use wildcards and regex patterns to be even more precise about the type of parameters your method accepts.

• Another option is that you might want to implement a _remap() method in your controller in order to do the route remapping for you.

Answer 2

in routes.php file, you can write following line

    $route['products/(:any)/(:any)/(:num)'] = 'products/filter/$1/$2/$3';

and function will be like following

    public function filter($category, $color, $page)
    {        
        echo $category.'<br>';
        echo $color.'<br>';         
        echo $page.'<br>';
    }