Question

I am building a PHP application in CodeIgniter. CodeIgniter sends all requests to the main controller: index.php. However, I don’t like to see index.php in the URI. For example, http://www.example.com/faq/whatever will route to http://www.example.com/index.php/faq/whatever. I need a reliable way for a script to know what it’s address is, so it will know what to do with the navigation. I’ve used mod_rewrite, as per CodeIgniter documentation.

The rule is as follows:

RewriteEngine on RewriteCond $1 !^(images|inc|favicon\.ico|index\.php|robots\.txt) RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php/$1 [L]  

Normally, I would just check php_self, but in this case it’s always index.php. I can get it from REQUEST_URI, PATH_INFO, etc., but I’m trying to decide which will be most reliable. Does anyone know (or know where to find) the real difference between PHP_SELF, PATH_INFO, SCRIPT_NAME, and REQUEST_URI? Thanks for your help!

Note: I’ve had to add spaces, as SO sees the underscore, and makes it italic for some reason.

Updated: Fixed the spaces.

Answer 1

The PHP documentation can tell you the difference:

‘PHP_SELF’

The filename of the currently executing script, relative to the document root. For instance, $_SERVER[‘PHP_SELF’] in a script at the address http://example.com/test.php/foo.bar would be /test.php/foo.bar. The __FILE__ constant contains the full path and filename of the current (i.e. included) file. If PHP is running as a command-line processor this variable contains the script name since PHP 4.3.0. Previously it was not available.

‘SCRIPT_NAME’

Contains the current script’s path. This is useful for pages which need to point to themselves. The __FILE__ constant contains the full path and filename of the current (i.e. included) file.

‘REQUEST_URI’

The URI which was given in order to access this page; for instance, ‘/index.html’.

‘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 URI http://www.example.com/php/path_info.php/some/stuff?foo=bar, then $_SERVER[‘PATH_INFO’] would contain /some/stuff.