Need php template help and clean url help

Question

I'm new to PHP and web development in general, but have been a programmer for 5 years. I'm trying to work on my own website from scratch using Notepad to edit my PHP files and WAMP for my server. I'm able to view my files fine in Safari, Chrome and Firefox, but not IE (which we all know IE isn't the greatest) because I'm using some HTML5 stuff. Anyways, I have an Includes folder that holds my files for my header, menu and footer. I have an index.php file that includes these files and displays them fine. In the center of the page is where I want the content. To try and keep clean urls, I made quite a few folders and put this same index.php file in there (eg Profile/index.php, Forums/index.php, etc.). I did this so when I went to localhost/mysite/profile/ it showed me the template I wanted to use. However, there has got to be a better way to use the template and a better way to have clean urls. I'm not currently hosting this site anywhere so I don't know if I'll have access to the htaccess file (not even sure what it is honestly, just seen it mentioned), but I was curious of having the folder structure (one folder for each menu item) is a normal or ok practice? I was also curious if there is a way to use the index.php without having to copy and paste it every time I make a small change. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Answer 1

If you are planning on templating I suggest using an existing platform like Symfony , Zend Framework, or Smarty . Smarty is probably the easiest to get going with and it is (almost) purely for templating. Whereas Symfony and Zend Framework are big packages with lots of bells and whistles.

If I was going to be doing pure templating I would look at Smarty. I use Zend Framework for just about all my current PHP projects now but it has a pretty steep learning curve. Your first couple weeks will be frustrating.

As far as URLs go, .htaccess is probably the preferred method (at least in my book). Zend Framework and Symfony both have kind of default URL writing style that looks like http://host/controller/action where controller would be Profile or Forums . You wouldn't necessarily have to see host/profile/index , it could be host/profile or host/profile/edit , where edit is the action being performed.

Answer 2

Copying the index.php file is not really the way I would go. It seems messy and there are a few other options. If you want the urls to be clean and search engine friendly you should really have a look at url rewriting using .htaccess

You're saying that you're not sure if you will have a server with "access to the htaccess file" but if you can upload files you can always upload a .htaccess file as well -- the problem is that the web server is not always using them or might not have mod_rewrite enabled. In this case you can get your urls on the format of http://www.example.com/index.php?u=/Profile/foo (this is also my preferred way to handle url rewrites).

In your index.php just make sure to read the requested url parameter passed by mod_rewrite and include whatever files in the folder that you need. Actually, you don't even need a "physical" folder structure, you might want to implement it using classes or something like that. (I'm sure I would).

I would really recommend that you go have a look at a good PHP framework, CodeIgniter for example. Even if you decide to code everything from scratch, you would still learn a lot about best practices for url handling, databases, the MVC pattern, template engines, database abstraction layers and PHP coding in general.

Answer 3

your answer is the htaccess file, is converts the 'folder structure' to $_GET value's

for example,

if you're in website.com/Profile/ you can write an htaccess line that will convert that into website.com/index.php?folder=Profile

htaccess:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^/(.*)/$ index.php?folder=$1 [NC,L,QSA] 
RewriteRule ^/(.*).html$ index.php?folder=$1 [NC,L,QSA]