PHP File request from url directory

Problem

This is a very basic/common problem which stems from the fact that your .htaccess rule is rewriting a url which contains a directory which actually exists...

File structure

>support
    >sys
        >issue
            issue.php
        .htaccess

(I.e. the directory issue and the .htaccess file are in the same directory: sys)

Rewrite Issues

Then:

RewriteEngine ON
RewriteRule ^issue/(.*)/*$ issue/issue.php?id=$1 [L]
# Note the added /* before $. In case people try to access your url with a trailing slash

Will not work. This is because (Note: -> = redirects to):
http://www.mysite.com/support/sys/issue/1234
-> http://www.mysite.com/support/sys/issue/issue.php?id=1234
-> http://www.mysite.com/support/sys/issue/issue.php?id=issue.php

Example/Test

Try it with var_dump($_GET) and the following URLs:

• http://mysite.com/support/sys/issue/1234
• http://mysite.com/support/sys/issue/issue.php

Output will always be:

array(1) { ["id"]=> string(9) "issue.php" } 

Solution

You have three main options:

1. Add a condition that real files aren't redirected
2. Only rewrite numbers e.g. rewrite issue/123 but not issue/abc
3. Do both

Method 1

RewriteEngine ON
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^issue/(.*)/*$ issue/issue.php?id=$1 [L]

Method 2

RewriteEngine ON
RewriteRule ^issue/(\d*)/*$ issue/issue.php?id=$1 [L]

Method 3

RewriteEngine ON
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^issue/(\d*)/*$ issue/issue.php?id=$1 [L]

Retrieving the ID

This is the simple part...

$issueid = $_GET['id'];

In your .htaccess you should add:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^id/([^/]*)$ /get.php/?id=$1 [L]

Also like previous posters mentioned, make sure you have your mod_rewrite activated.

You have to use a file called .htaccess, do a search on Google and you'll find a lot of examples how to accomplish that.

You will need mod_rewrite (or the equivalent on your platform) to rewrite /get.php/id/123 to /get.php?id=123.

I tried and tried the .htaccess method but to no avail. So I attempted a PHP solution and came up with this.

issue.php

<?php
if (strpos($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], 'issue.php') !== FALSE){
    $url = split('issue.php/', $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);
}elseif (strpos($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], 'issue') !== FALSE){
    $url = split('issue/', $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);
}else{
    exit("URI REQUESET ERROR"); 
}

$id = $url[1];

if(preg_match('/[^0-9]/i', $id)) {
    exit("Invalid ID");
}
?>

What you're looking for is the PATH_INFO $_SERVER variable.

From http://php.net/manual/en/reserved.variables.server.php:

'PATH_INFO'

Contains any client-provided pathname information trailing the actual script filename but preceding the query string, if available. For instance, if the current script was accessed via the URL http://www.example.com/php/path_info.php/some/stuff?foo=bar, then $_SERVER['PATH_INFO'] would contain /some/stuff.

explode() it and work on its parts.

EDIT: Use rewrite rules to map the users' request URLs to your internal structure and/or hide the script name. But not to convert the PATH_INFO to a GET query, that's totally unnecessary! Just do a explode('/',$_SERVER['PATH_INFO']) and you're there!

Also, seeing your own answer, you don't need any preg_mathes. If your database only contains numeric ids, giving it a non-numeric one will simply be rejected. If for some reason you still need to check if a string var has a numeric value, consider is_numeric().

Keep it simple. Don't reinvent the wheel!

Just wondering why no answer has mentioned you about use of RewriteBase

As per Apache manual:

The RewriteBase directive specifies the URL prefix to be used for per-directory (htaccess) RewriteRule directives that substitute a relative path.

Using RewriteBase in your /support/sys/issue/.htaccess, code will be simply:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /support/sys/issue/

RewriteRule ^([0-9+)/?$ issue.php?id=$1 [L,QSA]

Then insde your issue.php you can do:

$id = $_GET['id'];

to retrieve your id from URL.