Question

For my program I use dynamic URL rewriting with PHP:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteBase /
    #Rewrite the URI if there is no file or folder
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    #rewrite all to index.php
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?/$1 [L]
</IfModule>

In PHP I then break down the URL in its different parts. For example http://myhost/foo/bar returns foo bar. The problem I have is if the program is not located in the root directory of the server, for example http://myhost/this/is/a/folder/hereistheprogram/foo/bar, because then the script returnes this is a folder hereistheprogram foo bar. Now have the problem that I can’t differentiate between the folders and the URL parameters.

Answer 1

You need to know what the path to the script file is. You can do that by either explicitly declaring the path prefix or by determining it automatically, for example:

$basePath = dirname($_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME']);

Then you can use that prefix and strip it from the request URI path:

if (substr($requestPath, 0, strlen($basePath)+1) === $basePath.'/') {
    $path = substr($requestPath, strlen($basePath));
} else {
    $path = $requestPath;
}

By the way: It would be better if you don’t pass the request URI path explicitly to your index.php but retrieve it from $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']:

$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI_PATH'] = parse_url($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], PHP_URL_PATH);
$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI_QUERY'] = parse_url($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], PHP_URL_QUERY);

And the corresponding mod_rewrite rule:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php [L]