Question

I am trying to create a URL shortener using CodeIgniter 2.

I have 2 controllers: main and api.

For redirecting a short link through the router, I am using this setting in config/routes:

$route['(.*)'] = "main/$1";

along with a method in the main controller which should work. However, the controllers won’t start. Please help me to solve this problem.

Answer 1

You controller “any” isnt called because it falls into that regex, so it’s routed to main.
In order to exclude “any” from this rule you need to create a special rule for that, keeping in mind that for CI rules are cascading , so they’re executed in the order they’re presented

Note: Routes will run in the order
they are defined. Higher routes will
always take precedence over lower
ones.

So, you would have:

// reserved routes must come before custom routes
$route['default_controller'] = "home";
$route['404_override'] = '';
$route['any'] = //your rule here. maybe "any". ?
$route['(.*)'] = "main/$1";  // CI also provides you with `(:any)` rule, that mateches any character.

More on this here: Uri routing