Question

In php I have a script, that I use mod_rewrite to redirect all calls in a particular url. For example the mod rewrite rule is something like:

RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/articles/$1  !-f
RewriteRule ^/articles/(.+)$ /articles/index.php [L]

Then my index.php script splits the url into its components and based on the components performs a particular function.

My problem is figuring out how to make the script 404 when people add additional subfolders to the URL. For example, if I have a url like this:

http://www.example.com/part/blue-widget/

My script will show the blue-widget page. Now if someone changes the url to read:

http://www.example.com/part/blue-widget/another_dir/

The script will still show the blue-widget page using this new URL. What I would like is for the script to instead issue a 404 error. I could have each function check for the amount of components in the URL and if its the right amount, show the content, otherwise issue a 404, but am not sure this is the best way to do it.

Answer 1

Depends on how the code which loads each page works, surely? eg, If each folder is a parameter in a function (like a lot of frameworks), you could compare the amount of folders against the amount of input parameters the function has?

EDIT: Will something like this do?

If you have a set of known parts, you could do:

switch ($part) {
    case 'blue-widget':
        // Show blue widget
    break;
    case 'red-widget':
        // Show redwidget
    break;
    case 'yellow-widget':
        // Show yellow widget
    break;
    default:
       header('HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently');
       header("Location: xxx");
}