Question

I have a URL like http://domain.com/index.php?user=test

When a user logs in, I want to show a URL like http://domain.com/user (user will be dynamic).

How might I achieve this with URL rewriting using PHP?

Answer 1

You should use something based off .htaccess. Take WordPress’ for instance:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

This says grab any page which does not exist (such as “user” in your case), and redirect to the main index.php file.

That main index.php can then grab the “user”, and you can use it to grab data from your database and show whatever you want.

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EDIT– similar to AlienWebguy’s answer

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^like/(.+) /like.php?user=$1 [L]
</IfModule>