writing htaccess

[alexgeek]

how would I implement htaccess into my blog creation. example how can i get the following: http://www.alexgeek.co.uk/blog.php?id=2 to rewrite to: http://www.alexgeek.co.uk/blog/googlers automatically when the entry is made? Googlers is the title of that entry. Hope thats clear

[c010depunkk]

Well, the rewrite rule would look something like this:

Code: Select all

RewriteRule ^blog/([A-Za-z0-9 ]*)/?$ blog.php?name=$1 [L]

Then you'll either have to make the blog entry names unique, so you can read them out of the database.

[alexgeek]

Thanks, I'll see what I can come up with.

[alexgeek]

I thought of an easier (slightly less SEO friendly) way of doing this.
for each blog, i will write a new php file.
so the googlers entry would be something like:
alexgeek.co.uk/blogs/googlers.php

the file would be:
<?php
include('../blog.php?id=2);
?>

A lot easier i think.
and SEO won't be that bad I don't think.

[c010depunkk]

OUCH! That's ok for a smaller, relatively static web site, but NOT for a blog. Think about how the folder where you store your *.php blog entries is going to look when you have 100 blog entries....

What you're planning on doing is like manually re-inventing mod_rewrite.....!

All you need is a unique name or id for each blog entry and reading the entries out of a database will work. You don't need to make a new file for each entry AND store the entries in a DB!

[alexgeek]

htaccess is very confusing.
I think it may be too advanced for me.

[c010depunkk]

Originally Posted by alexgeek

htaccess is very confusing.
I think it may be too advanced for me.

hey, cmon.... It ain't that bad.... and you're a clever little man! Start by learning the basics of regular expressions. I taught myself here.

You don't have to conquer all of Rome this evening, start by building yourself a little "regex dagger." I promise you'll get your big guns later!

[alexgeek]

Thanks ha
They confuse me, but I'll try harder!
cheers Jan.

[c010depunkk]

That's the way I like it!

PS: the Backstreet Boys suck!

[AdRock]

Originally Posted by alexgeek

htaccess is very confusing.
I think it may be too advanced for me.

htaccess isn't oo bad when you get what is going on but it is daunting at first

[alexgeek]

It seems to me that these two contradict each other:

Typing a caret after the opening square bracket will negate the character class. The result is that the character class will match any character that is not in the character class. q[^x] matches qu in question. It does not match Iraq since there is no character after the q for the negated character class to match.

Anchors do not match any characters. They match a position. ^ matches at the start of the string, and $ matches at the end of the string. Most regex engines have a "multi-line" mode that makes ^ match after any line break, and $ before any line break. E.g. ^b matches only the first b in bob.
\b matches at a word boundary. A word boundary is a position between a character that can be matched by \w and a character that cannot be matched by \w. \b also matches at the start and/or end of the string if the first and/or last characters in the string are word characters. \B matches at every position where \b cannot match.

[c010depunkk]

Nope, the ^caret just has different meaning in different places.

When it comes at the very beginning of a regex, then it means that the string HAS to start here. When it comes right after a [ square bracket (character class definition) then it means "match everything but the characters defined here."

And a \b word boundary is "a position BETWEEN a character that can be matched by \w and a[nother] character that cannot be matched by \w." We're talking about two different characters here, just in case that was also confusing you.

[alexgeek]

Thanks, that part really confused me!