Question

On my website I have a dropdown of counties…

<form method="post" action="/people.php" >
            <select name="county" onchange="this.form.submit()" >
                <option>--Select a County--</option>
                <option value="Avon">Avon</option>
                <option value="Bedfordshire">Bedfordshire</option>
                <option value="Berkshire">Berkshire</option>
            </select>
</form>

I then have my query on my people page…

$county = $_POST['county'];

$sth = $conn->prepare("SELECT * FROM directory WHERE user_active != '' AND County = :county");
$sth->execute(array(':county' => $county));

I want to use URL rewrites to include the county in my url, so when you go to the page after selecting a county it doesnt display like

'www.mysite.com/people.php'

but shows as

'www.mysite.com/people-in-avon'

Im still very much a newbie at PHP but, if I want to do this, will I need to use GET method, and post my data to a php page, that then redirects to people.php? Is it bad practice in PHP to have the queries on page?

I hope this makes sense?

Answer 1

You first need to use an .htaccess with some basic redirections to be able to use people-in-[country] URLs.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^people-in-(.*) /people.php?county=$1 [L]

In your people.php :

<?php

// you county is set in GET via the .htaccess
$county = $_GET['county'];

// database query
$sth = $conn->prepare("SELECT * FROM directory WHERE user_active != '' AND County = :county");
$sth->execute(array(':county' => $county));

?>

To create the URL, you should replace special characters, accents, space…
But if your counties are in one word, without special characters, you could just do :

<?php 

// to redirect
$county = $_POST['county'];
$url = '/people-in-' . $county;
// redirect
header('Location:' . $url);

To retrieve by ID your county, you could do something like that (pseudo code):

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^people-in-.*-([0-9]+) /people.php?county_id=$1 [L]

To show the county :

// you county_id is set in GET via the .htaccess
$county_id = $_GET['county_id'];

To route to the county :

// to redirect
$county_id = $_POST['county_id'];

// fetch the county by id
// BASIC string cleaning
$county = str_replace(' ', '-', $county);

$url = '/people-in-' . $county . '-' . $county_id;

// redirect
header('Location:' . $url);